OPTIONAL: Court's decision in New York v. Williams

This is the New York Court of Appeals decision in New York v. Williams - the case where the Innocence Project filed the amicus brief you read. The Court held that it WAS an abuse of discretion for the trial court to deny a Frye hearing, but held that the error was harmless because there was other, overwhelming, evidence of the defendant’s guilt.

Importantly, the Court recognized:

Our conclusion that the trial court abused its discretion as a matter of law in denying a Frye hearing is not the only important point. We have said that a Frye hearing is generally unwarranted “[a]bsent a novel or experimental scientific theory” (Brooks, 31 NY3d at 941). That teaching, of course, leaves room for such a hearing even where the scientific principle in question is neither novel nor experimental. The recoil with respect to previously accepted techniques demonstrates the importance of the space accorded trial courts to conduct a Frye hearing even with respect to a scientific approach that may have become common over time.

Familiarity does not always breed accuracy, and our Frye jurisprudence accounts for the fact that evolving views and opinions in a scientific community may occasionally require the scrutiny of a Frye hearing with respect to a familiar technique. There is no absolute rule as to when a Frye hearing should or should not be granted, and courts should be guided by the current state of scientific knowledge and opinion in making such determinations.

Indeed, admissibility even after a finding of general acceptance through a Frye hearing is not always automatic. Recent questioning of previously accepted techniques related to hair comparisons, fire origin, comparative bullet lead analysis, bite mark matching, and bloodstain-pattern analysis illustrates that point; all of those analyses have long been accepted within their relevant scientific communities but recently have come  into varying degrees of question (see e.g. Overturning Wrongful Convictions Involving Misapplied Forensics, available at https://www.innocenceproject.org/overturningwrongful-convictions-involving-flawed-forensics/ [last accessed Feb. 21, 2020]; Heather Murphy, A Leading Cause for Wrongful Convictions: Experts Overstating Forensic Results, NY Times, April 20, 2019; Leora Smith, How a Dubious Forensic Science Spread Like a Virus, available at https://features.propublica.org/blood-spatter-analysis/herbertmacdonell-forensic-evidence-judges-and-courts/ [last accessed Feb. 21, 2020]). Those points, and the lessons of this case, reinforce the importance of judicial caution in the admission of developing scientific evidence in proceedings that may result in the deprivation or limitation of liberty.11