Effectively Presenting Crash Reconstruction and EDR Evidence at Trial.

AuthorMelkonian, William J.
PositionEvent data recorder

YOU ARE FULLY ENGAGED in your first trial involving a car crash resulting in death or serious injury. The evidence includes the testimony of a crash reconstructionist and interpretation of the data from an event data recorder (EDR). You fret over the pretrial motions to allow the crash expert's testimony and the EDR evidence to go to the jury. The motion hearings are brutal. In law school, they did not teach you about chord middle ordinates... or pedestrian throw formulas... or Newton's Laws... or data sampling, but, here you are, presenting all this information to a judge, doing your best to sound as though you understand the subject matter. You did not sign on for this.

Ultimately, though, you prevail. The Court admits the reconstructionist's testimony and the EDR evidence. Your duties as a prosecutor now are to: (1) present the evidence so that the laypeople of the jury understand it and (2) persuade them that your theory of the case is the correct one--tasks which might be more difficult than anything you encountered in the pretrial motions.

Unfortunately, not many resources are available to help you effectively present your motor vehicle case. Through trial (literally) and error, We have developed the following tips. We hope you find them to be helpful.

  1. Remember the True Purpose of Expert Testimony

    This tip forms the basis for the rest. The classic definition of expert testimony is that which helps the jurors understand a topic outside the common knowledge of a layperson. The Federal Rules of Evidence (702), as well as state rules of evidence, essentially repeat this definition. When you are preparing for your reconstructionist's direct examination, keep in mind that the jurors will be hearing this technical evidence for the first time. You have to educate them. Discuss the evidence you seek to admit with your colleagues. If they understand the evidence as you have explained it, you are on the right track. Let this "mooting" of the evidence form the outline of your reconstructionist's direct examination.

  2. Use Layperson Language and Everyday Examples/Analogies

    Lay as basic a foundation as possible without allowing the evidence to become too technical. Reconstructionists should avoid detailing formulas or performing calculations in front of the jury. The better practice is to identify the key measurements they subsequently used in a formula--itself, generally accepted and based on principles of physics--to reach their conclusions.

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