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State v. Coon3/5/1999
[No. 5091 - March 5, 1999]
Petition for Hearing from the Court of Appeals of the State of Alaska, on appeal from the Superior Court of the State of Alaska, Third Judicial District, Palmer, Beverly W. Cutler, Judge.
FABE, Justice, Concurring in part, and Dissenting in part.
I. INTRODUCTION
A jury found George Coon guilty of making three terroristic telephone calls. We must decide whether the superior court erred in admitting opinion evidence, based on a voice spectrographic analysis, that Coon made those calls. Applying the Alaska Rules of Evidence and the standard for admitting novel scientific opinion evidence, articulated by the United States Supreme Court in Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc., 509 U.S. 579 (1993), we hold that it was not error to admit that evidence, and affirm Coon's conviction.
II. FACTS AND PROCEEDINGS
Three messages threatening David Rudolph's life were left on Deborah Rudolph's telephone answering machine. Deborah, Coon's former daughter-in-law, recognized the recorded voice as Coon's. The State charged Coon under former AS 11.56.810(a)(2) with terroristic threatening.
The State retained a voice analysis expert, Steve Cain, who compared the voice on the answering machine with verbatim voice exemplars provided by Coon. At Coon's 1992 trial, the superior court held a hearing outside the jury's presence to determine whether Cain's testimony would be admissible under Frye v. United States, 293 F. 1013 (D.C. Cir. 1923). The superior court found that Cain's testimony was relevant and would assist the jury. It therefore held that the evidence was admissible under Alaska Evidence Rule 702. The court also concluded that spectrographic analysis of voices satisfied the Frye test for admitting novel scientific evidence, and that the identification of voices by analyzing spectrograms had been generally accepted by courts and was a reliable technique. The jury then heard Cain express his opinions that Coon made the first telephone call, and that there was a high probability Coon also made the second and third calls. Cain described for the jury the scientific foundation for his opinions. The jury found Coon guilty of terroristic threatening.
On appeal, the Alaska Court of Appeals held that the appellate record did not support admitting Cain's testimony at trial. It reasoned that the State had not presented evidence concerning the relevant scientific community and whether that community generally accepted voice spectrographic analysis. It noted that the superior court had made no findings on those topics, contrary to the requirements of Frye. It remanded, reasoning that the State might be able to establish that voice spectrographic analysis met the Frye standard for admissibility. Citing Contreras v. State, 718 P.2d 129 (Alaska 1986), where we adhered to the Frye standard, the court of appeals declined to address the State's argument that the Frye standard was no longer viable in Alaska following adoption of the Alaska Rules of Evidence and announcement of the Daubert opinion.
Petitioning for hearing, the State asked us to consider the same arguments. It also argued that the trial court's ruling satisfied Daubert. We granted the State's petition. Following briefing and oral argument, we remanded with directions that the superior court enter findings of fact and Conclusions of law about whether Cain's testimony was admissible under Evidence Rule 703. The order also required findings of fact and Conclusions of law about the admissibility of the proffered testimony under the Frye and Daubert standards. We retained jurisdiction. Entering separate findings and Conclusions
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