Qualified Immunity for Expert Witness Who Lied, Conviction Vacated
After her murder conviction was vacated, Lana Canen sued the expert witness witness who had testified that her latent fingerprint was on a medication container found at the crime scene, even though he was untrained as a latent fingerprint examiner. The fingerprint was the only physical evidence used in convicting Canen.
In Canen v. Chapman, No. 16-1621 (7th Cir. 2017), the State's fingerprint expert witness, Detective Dennis Chapman, had testified at the original trial that he was an expert in latent fingerprints:
Q: … Do you also have training and experience in attempting
to recover latent prints from a crime scene?
A: Yes.
Chapman was, however, only trained to compare "known prints" (exemplar prints collected from subjects).
Canen's own fingerprint expert witness, Charles Lambdin, a retired detective, did not exclude her print either, and her attorney did not question Chapman about his qualifications. Canen was convicted and received a fifty-five year sentence.
After exhausting her direct appeals, Canen filed a petition for state postconviction relief (PCR), and her attorney retained a certified latent fingerprint expert witness, Kathleen Bright-Birnbaum, who reviewed the evidence and excluded Canen as the source of the fingerprint.
Chapman re-examined the evidence and agreed with Bright-Birnbaum, testifying that he had erred in his original expert opinion. Asked why he had changed his opinion, Chapman stated that "part of it" was having received training on latent fingerprint identification in 2006 — long after Ms. Canen's trial.
After Chapman's testimony, the State requested a continuance to allow the Indiana State Police Laboratory to examine the fingerprint evidence. The laboratory excluded Canen as well. After having spent more than seven years in prison, Canen was freed, her conviction vacated.
Canen sued Chapman in federal district court for deprivation of rights (42 U.S.C. 1983), claiming that he had "withheld his lack of qualification to perform latent fingerprint analysis" and therefore had violated Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83 (1963), the U.S. Supreme Court case that established that the prosecution must turn over all exculpatory evidence to the defense.
The District Court expressed doubts that Chapman's "lack of expertise was suppressed to withhold evidence" (a Brady violation) as the latent fingerprint was available to her expert. Chapman was entitled to qualified immunity, the District Court found. It did not resolve the Brady issue in its ruling, finding that "in any event" Chapman was immune from suit.
The U.S. Seventh Circuit Appellate Court agreed, referencing the Indiana Rules of Evidence 702 and the Indiana Supreme Court's clarification that, under that rule, "[n]o precise quantum of knowledge is required if the witness shows a sufficient acquaintance with the subject." (Fox v. State, 506 N.E.2d 1090, 1095 [Ind. 1987]).
Other states have been somewhat less protective of the immunity granted expert witnesses, which has raised the concern that expert's might be less willing to admit their mistakes, or false statements — and thus potentially leave those like Canen unjustly imprisoned.