Judicial Gullibility

In United States v. Mahone, a July decision from the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, the court agreed with the trial judge's decision that a forensic specialist in footwear impressions was qualified because "she stated that she had made more than 11,000 footwear comparisons [while] she had worked as a 'latent impressions' specialist for more than two years.  Giving the expert the benefit of the doubt on her years of experience, this means that she did fourteen comparisons a day every working day for three years.  This is a little hard to believe, yet the court never raised an eyebrow at such a patently ridiculous claim.  She also never said how many of the 11,000 she got right.

Such silliness is not limited to the First Circuit.  In a 2000 case, Sullivan v. Ford Motor Co., the federal court in Manhattan admitted a safety engineer's report following a severe accident.  Based on the expert's experience, the court found both that he was qualified to testify and that the basis for his testimony was reliable.  The court explained as follows:

The fact that [the expert] did not know all of the precise details about the accident at issue in this case does not indicate that his expertise based on his experiences investigating approximately 15,000 road accidents, preparing approximately 10,000 reports based on these investigations, witnessing approximately 100 test crashes, authoring studies based on his observations, as well as his education in the area of physics, mechanical engineering and law, would not be helpful to the jury in determining this factual issue.

Brief reflection on the expert's claimed experience suggests that it is somewhat incredible.  To have investigated 15,000 accidents, he would have had to visit approximately two accident scenes every working day for 30 years.  This leaves little time to write 10,000 accident reports.
-- DLF