CAR’S ‘BLACK BOX’ EVIDENCE ADMITTED
Prosecution Will Use Recording Device to Dispute Driver’s Statement After Fatal Crash
http://www.abanet.org/journal/ereport/j28box.html
BY MARK HANSEN
Interviewed at a hospital after a three-car collision that left two people dead, Blake Slade, who was driving one of the vehicles, told a detective he had been going about 50 or 55 mph at the time of the accident.
The detective expressed disbelief, according to court records, because he had already heard from several eyewitnesses that 19-year-old Slade and a friend driving another car were speeding side-by-side down a two-lane highway at approximately 100 mph before the collision in June 2002. But Slade told the detective, "There were no cops there to judge my speed."
True enough, but for Slade and his friend, Kyle Soukup, then 17, there was another disputing "witness." Soukup’s 2002 Chevrolet Corvette was equipped with a "black box," a computer module that, among other things, records a vehicle’s speed in the last five seconds before its airbags deploy in a collision.
Earlier this month, Judge Alan Honorof of New York’s trial-level Supreme Court in Nassau County on Long Island, ruled that evidence gleaned from the Corvette’s black box, which recorded the vehicle’s speed at 139 mph four seconds before the fatal accident, can be used in the upcoming second-degree murder trial of the two men.
Because the technology is still relatively new, experts say, data from a car’s black box (known formally as an event data recorder) has been used as evidence in only a handful of court cases around the country. But in the not-too-distant future, they predict, it will become as commonplace in courtrooms as tire-mark and vehicle-crush-damage evidence.
"It’s a rising wave," says Thomas Bohan, a lawyer and forensic physicist in Portland, Maine, who specializes in accident reconstruction. "And every month, there’s going to be more of it than the month before."
Slade and Soukup are each charged with two counts of second-degree murder in the deaths of a Long Island couple, Sophia Bretous, 23, and her 31-year-old fiancé, Jean Desir. Police say they were killed when Desir, the driver, tried to turn left in front of the two oncoming cars. Their 1993 Jeep Cherokee was first broadsided by the Corvette, which tore the vehicle in half. A split second later, Slade, driving a 2002 Mercedes-Benz, rammed into the front half of the Jeep, knocking it 300 yards up the road.
The defendants’ lawyers challenged the admissibility of the black-box evidence on the grounds that it was scientifically unreliable. They also moved to suppress the evidence because it had been obtained through an unlawful search and seizure. (Police had removed the black box from Soukup’s wrecked car without a search warrant. They later applied for and received a search warrant based on information they had obtained before they removed the device.)
At a hearing in September, William "Rusty" Haight, an accident reconstruction expert with more than 23 years of experience, testified for the prosecution on the reliability and general acceptance of black-box technology within the scientific community.
Haight said black-box technology has been used by the aviation industry since the 1940s. The same type of recording technology also is used on cruise ships, cargo ships and trains, he said. Haight testified that he has performed more than 200 crash tests comparing black-box data in cars with objective external instrumentation, and has found the data to be extremely reliable.
In a Jan. 6 ruling, based largely on Haight’s testimony, Judge Honorof found the black-box evidence to be "generally accepted as reliable in the scientific community," and therefore admissible. He also ruled that, although police obtained the black-box data through an illegal search, the evidence was still admissible under the "independent source doctrine." The doctrine, Honorof explained, permits the introduction of otherwise tainted evidence if it was obtained independently in the course of lawful activities untainted by the initial illegality.
Honorof noted that courts in at least five states, including Florida, Illinois, Michigan, Missouri and New York, have allowed black-box evidence to be used at trial.
Nassau County Assistant District Attorney Michael Walsh, the lead prosecutor in the case, says the black-box data will be used to corroborate the testimony of eyewitnesses and accident reconstruction experts.
Soukup’s lawyer, Jack Litman of New York City, said he was too busy to discuss the decision. Slade’s lawyer, Ronald Bekoff of Garden City, couldn’t be reached for comment.
Barbara Bernstein, executive director of the Nassau County chapter of the New York Civil Liberties Union, says she has no problem with the use of black-box technology as long as the owners of vehicles equipped with the devices are made aware of their installation.
"It’s like having a police officer sitting in the backseat of your car," she says.
A California law that took effect in 2004 requires manufacturers of vehicles equipped with black-box technology to disclose that fact in the owner’s manual. And Haight and Bohan say most, if not all, manufacturers of cars equipped with black boxes already volunteer that information.
Prosecution Will Use Recording Device to Dispute Driver’s Statement After Fatal Crash
http://www.abanet.org/journal/ereport/j28box.html
BY MARK HANSEN
Interviewed at a hospital after a three-car collision that left two people dead, Blake Slade, who was driving one of the vehicles, told a detective he had been going about 50 or 55 mph at the time of the accident.
The detective expressed disbelief, according to court records, because he had already heard from several eyewitnesses that 19-year-old Slade and a friend driving another car were speeding side-by-side down a two-lane highway at approximately 100 mph before the collision in June 2002. But Slade told the detective, "There were no cops there to judge my speed."
True enough, but for Slade and his friend, Kyle Soukup, then 17, there was another disputing "witness." Soukup’s 2002 Chevrolet Corvette was equipped with a "black box," a computer module that, among other things, records a vehicle’s speed in the last five seconds before its airbags deploy in a collision.
Earlier this month, Judge Alan Honorof of New York’s trial-level Supreme Court in Nassau County on Long Island, ruled that evidence gleaned from the Corvette’s black box, which recorded the vehicle’s speed at 139 mph four seconds before the fatal accident, can be used in the upcoming second-degree murder trial of the two men.
Because the technology is still relatively new, experts say, data from a car’s black box (known formally as an event data recorder) has been used as evidence in only a handful of court cases around the country. But in the not-too-distant future, they predict, it will become as commonplace in courtrooms as tire-mark and vehicle-crush-damage evidence.
"It’s a rising wave," says Thomas Bohan, a lawyer and forensic physicist in Portland, Maine, who specializes in accident reconstruction. "And every month, there’s going to be more of it than the month before."
Slade and Soukup are each charged with two counts of second-degree murder in the deaths of a Long Island couple, Sophia Bretous, 23, and her 31-year-old fiancé, Jean Desir. Police say they were killed when Desir, the driver, tried to turn left in front of the two oncoming cars. Their 1993 Jeep Cherokee was first broadsided by the Corvette, which tore the vehicle in half. A split second later, Slade, driving a 2002 Mercedes-Benz, rammed into the front half of the Jeep, knocking it 300 yards up the road.
The defendants’ lawyers challenged the admissibility of the black-box evidence on the grounds that it was scientifically unreliable. They also moved to suppress the evidence because it had been obtained through an unlawful search and seizure. (Police had removed the black box from Soukup’s wrecked car without a search warrant. They later applied for and received a search warrant based on information they had obtained before they removed the device.)
At a hearing in September, William "Rusty" Haight, an accident reconstruction expert with more than 23 years of experience, testified for the prosecution on the reliability and general acceptance of black-box technology within the scientific community.
Haight said black-box technology has been used by the aviation industry since the 1940s. The same type of recording technology also is used on cruise ships, cargo ships and trains, he said. Haight testified that he has performed more than 200 crash tests comparing black-box data in cars with objective external instrumentation, and has found the data to be extremely reliable.
In a Jan. 6 ruling, based largely on Haight’s testimony, Judge Honorof found the black-box evidence to be "generally accepted as reliable in the scientific community," and therefore admissible. He also ruled that, although police obtained the black-box data through an illegal search, the evidence was still admissible under the "independent source doctrine." The doctrine, Honorof explained, permits the introduction of otherwise tainted evidence if it was obtained independently in the course of lawful activities untainted by the initial illegality.
Honorof noted that courts in at least five states, including Florida, Illinois, Michigan, Missouri and New York, have allowed black-box evidence to be used at trial.
Nassau County Assistant District Attorney Michael Walsh, the lead prosecutor in the case, says the black-box data will be used to corroborate the testimony of eyewitnesses and accident reconstruction experts.
Soukup’s lawyer, Jack Litman of New York City, said he was too busy to discuss the decision. Slade’s lawyer, Ronald Bekoff of Garden City, couldn’t be reached for comment.
Barbara Bernstein, executive director of the Nassau County chapter of the New York Civil Liberties Union, says she has no problem with the use of black-box technology as long as the owners of vehicles equipped with the devices are made aware of their installation.
"It’s like having a police officer sitting in the backseat of your car," she says.
A California law that took effect in 2004 requires manufacturers of vehicles equipped with black-box technology to disclose that fact in the owner’s manual. And Haight and Bohan say most, if not all, manufacturers of cars equipped with black boxes already volunteer that information.
