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Supreme Court of South Carolina· 5/15/2019

Hamrick v. State

Citations

  • 828 S.E.2d 596
  • 426 S.C. 638

Syllabus

Daniel Hamrick appeals his conviction for felony driving under the influence resulting in great bodily injury. We find the trial court erred in admitting the opinion testimony of an officer on the subject of accident reconstruction. The officer's testimony was not admissible as lay opinion under Rule 701, SCRE, and the court failed to make the necessary findings the officer was qualified to give such an opinion under Rule 702, SCRE. We reverse and remand to the court of general sessions for a new trial.

How courts have described this case

Verbatim parenthetical descriptions written by other courts when citing this decision. Ranked by citation-network relevance.

  • holding that because the officer arrived on the scene forty-eight minutes after the accident, he \did not perceive the location of the impact\
  • recognizing that accident reconstruction testimony requires an expert witness foundation because \[a]ccident reconstruction is a highly technical and specialized field\ that relies upon principles unfamiliar to the general public
  • noting that Rule 701 provides that lay opinions are \limited to those opinions . . . rationally based on the perception of the witness\
  • holding the trial court erred because it \failed to make the necessary findings that the State established the foundation required by Rule 702\
  • finding evidence of the defendant's out-of-court experiment was probative of whether the State's evidence was accurate and credible
  • providing evidence of an out-of-court experiment is admissible if it is relevant under Rule 401, SCRE, and not otherwise inadmissible under Rules 402 & 403, SCRE

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).

Judges: Few

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6 cases in this archive cite this case.

Cites

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