User:Colmcguire/sandbox

History[edit]
This standard comes from Frye v. United States, 293 F. 1013 (D.C. Cir. 1923), a case discussing the admissibility of systolic blood pressure deception test as evidence. The Frye v. United States case was the first movement towards the usage of the Frye standard in court. In this case, the defense attorney attempted to prove his client's innocence by asking him questions while using an early model polygraph, which is also known as a lie detector. Because this polygraph was not widely accepted across the scientific community at the time, the judge excluded this information as evidence and Frye was convicted. The court in Frye held that expert testimony must be based on scientific methods that are sufficiently established and accepted. The court wrote:"Just when a scientific principle or discovery crosses the line between the experimental and demonstrable stages is difficult to define. Somewhere in this twilight zone the evidential force of the principle must be recognized, and while the courts will go a long way in admitting expert testimony deduced from a well-recognized scientific principle or discovery, the thing from which the deduction is made must be sufficiently established to have gained general acceptance in the particular field in which it belongs. (Emphasis added.)"In many but not all jurisdictions, the Frye standard has been superseded by the Daubert standard. States still following Frye include: California, Illinois, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, and Washington.

New Jersey chose to follow an adaption of the Daubert standard, stopping just short of becoming a "Daubert jurisdiction".

On May 23, 2019, the Florida Supreme Court accepted the Daubert standard.

Effective July 1, 2014, Kansas adopted Daubert and no longer follows the Frye standard.

Maryland's Court of Appeals adopted the Daubert standard on August 28, 2020, in Rochkind v. Stevenson.

Frye standard flaws
The first flaw with the Frye standard is the need for a scientific expert testimony. This is a flaw because the attorney can select whichever expert they believe will best represent the idea they want to portray in court. This selection of an expert is also known as expert-shopping, and can lead to improper representation of scientific evidence in court. Another flaw within the Frye standard is the definition of "generally accepted" scientific evidence. What defines "generally accepted"? What defines scientific? Does the general acceptance apply to the means, the reasoning, both, or only the expert's opinion? Further building off these questions comes the importance of the judge's jurisdiction. Judges had the task of determining the answers to these questions. Because this could at times be more subjective than objective, judges across the nation had the potential to rule opposite of another judge when both were given the same scientific evidence. This created a large discrepancy in the consistency of the use of the Frye standard. Another fear across the legal system was the opportunity for scientific experts to present junk science as scientific fact. Finally, the Frye standard does not leave much room for new scientific discoveries to be used in court cases, as seen in the original Frye v. United States case with the denial of the early model polygraph as scientific evidence. The need for general acceptance often hinders new discoveries that could aid a legal case, and court cases generally require a quick decision that cannot wait for the scientific community to come to a general consensus regarding the validity of the new science.