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Massie v. State5/26/1998
ns of the state's case would not have altered the outcome. Id.
The contrary result was reached in State v. Mallett, 600 A.2d 273 (R.I. 1991), a murder prosecution. The witness was a Lieutenant in the Providence Fire Department who had completed the basic and intermediate courses in emergency medicine and 180 hours of training in cardiac emergency medicine. The victim had been beaten sometime after 10:00 a.m. by the accused and left in an apartment house hallway, according to an eyewitness who was a drug addict and prostitute. In an obvious effort to bolster the credibility of this eyewitness, the state called the emergency medical witness who had responded at 11:05 a.m. that same day. He was permitted to state, based on observing dilated pupils and blood which was still wet, that death occurred within fifteen minutes before his arrival and that death definitely had not occurred the previous night. The Supreme Court of Rhode Island found this admissible under that state's counterpart of Rule 5-701.
That there should not be an absolute rule prohibiting non-physician testimony as to the time of death and that the admissibility of lay testimony depends upon the facts of a particular case are well illustrated by People v. Ramos, 60 Cal. Rptr. 2d 523 (Cal. App. 1997). Ramos was convicted of first-degree burglary, one of the elements of which was that the house "'currently being used for dwelling purposes, whether occupied or not.'" Id. at 524. Ramos had told the police that, after he broke into the house, he found the deceased "stiff" in bed. There was no conflicting evidence. Concluding that the house was not being used for dwelling purposes, the court reduced the conviction to second-degree burglary based on Ramos's lay testimony.
We find persuasive the analysis in Miller v. Brass Rail Tavern, Inc., 664 A.2d 525 (Pa. 1995), a wrongful death action asserting dram shop liability. On the day before his death the decedent, after consuming alcoholic beverages at other locations, arrived at the defendant's tavern at about 10:30 p.m. and drank until 1:30 a.m. He was last seen alive between 2:15 and 2:30 a.m. when he dropped friends off and resumed driving his vehicle. Sometime later he was killed in an automobile accident. Time of death was relevant because the closer in time that the accident happened to the defendant's having served intoxicants to the decedent the greater was the liability exposure of the defendant. The trial court excluded an opinion on the time of death that was proffered through the lay coroner, a licensed mortician, ruling that only an individual with a medical degree could render that type of opinion. Id. at 527.
The intermediate appellate court affirmed, with a dissent. Miller v. Brass Rail Tavern, Inc., 643 A.2d 694 (Pa. Super. 1994). That court did not draw a bright line between physicians and others but held that the proponent of the evidence had failed to meet the burden of showing that the witness "had a responsible pretension to specialized knowledge in the area under investigation." Id. at 696. As that court read the record, the witness "did not explain the methodology he used, his basis of knowledge, his investigative techniques, nor his background in this area of forensics." Id.
The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania reversed, holding that the trial court had abused its discretion by ruling that only physicians could be competent to opine and by not permitting the proponent of the opinion to qualify the witness. Miller, 664 A.2d at 529. The court reviewed its general rules governing the admissibility of expert opinion evidence--rules that are quite similar to the Maryland rules reviewed, infra. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court was of the
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