How, and under what circumstances would the introduction of &quot;sociological&quot; evidence be allowed in a courtroom?
<p>A female founder of a bankrupt healthcare company is being tried for fraud. Her defense team foreshadowed its intention to blame her actions on her former male partner, for things like &quot;domestic abuse&quot; and &quot;domination.&quot;</p>
<p>If I were a prosecutor, I would want to rebut this, e.g., by showing full length photos of the woman standing several inches taller than the man. I would want to play recordings of the two people's voices (Elizabeth's voice is deeper, at least her fake voice). I might show comparisons of the popularity of young white women versus middle aged Indian (or Asian) males on such dating apps as Tinder or Instagram to show that the woman was socially dominant. I would also want to have experts comment on the meanings of these matters.</p>
<p>To what extent would such &quot;sociological&quot; information (and related expert testimony) be allowed in a California courtroom? Would some items be allowed and some not, all allowed, or none allowed? And how might they be used; would they be mainly in &quot;rebuttal&quot; or in other contexts as well?</p>
<p><strong>Edit:</strong> My current understanding is as follows: On one hand, the defense can elect to &quot;say nothing&quot; and let the prosecution prove its case, in which case the above would be irrelevant. On the other hand, if the defense puts up an affirmative defense, e.g. &quot;insanity,&quot; the prosecution has a certain latitude in picking apart the proffered defense. So the sociological information could only be used in rebuttal.</p>
<p>But suppose the defense team does try to shift the blame in this matter. How much latitude does the prosecution have to use sociological information like the above in rebuttal?</p>

<p>There is virtually no chance this would be admissible.</p>
<p>When a defendant argues that abuse at the hands of third party led to a mental defect that excuses her from culpability, the prosecution is free to rebut that argument.</p>
<p>However, the prosecution's <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/rules/fre/rule_401" rel="noreferrer">evidence must be relevant</a>, i.e., it must have a tendency to make a fact of consequence more or less likely to be true.</p>
<p>Here, none of the proffered evidence has any real bearing on any fact of consequence:</p>
<ul>
<li>The fact that the defendant is taller than the alleged abuser does not make it less likely that the defendant was abused.</li>
<li>The fact that the defendant's &quot;fake&quot; voice (what does that even mean?) is deeper than the alleged abuser's does not make it less likely that the defendant was abused.</li>
<li>The fact that young white women have more Tinder matches than middle-aged Indian men does not make it less likely that the defendant was abused.</li>
</ul>
<p>Even if you could find some thin reed on which to hang the relevance of these racial and gender stereotypes, the evidence would likely still be excluded under <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/rules/fre/rule_403" rel="noreferrer">Rule 403</a>, as the probative value would be so trivial that it would be outweighed by the likelihood of unfair prejudice or misleading the jury.</p>

<blockquote>
<p>To what extent would such &quot;sociological&quot; information (and related
expert testimony) be allowed in a California courtroom? Would some
items be allowed and some not, all allowed, or none allowed? And how
might they be used; would they be mainly in &quot;rebuttal&quot; or in other
contexts as well?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>There are multiple evidentiary rules that apply.</p>
<ol>
<li>Testimony about something other than what actually happened in a particular incident usually has to be introduced through expert testimony. One can't just introduce a book or an article discussing a principle or idea (with some narrow exceptions, for example, for &quot;market quotations&quot; and for facts that are general knowledge like which day of the week a particular date feel upon and whether it was a holiday or not, of which a court may take &quot;judicial notice.&quot;).</li>
</ol>
<p>Testimony from someone who doesn't have personal knowledge of the facts of the case and is instead testifying about more general concepts and applying them to the circumstances of a case is called &quot;expert testimony&quot; and in order for it to be admitted, the person testifying must be admitted to testify as an expert. The process of qualifying someone as an expert witness is two-fold.</p>
<p>First, the court must establish that the discipline and method to be used is scientific and reliable enough for a jury to consider.</p>
<p>Second, the witness must establish that the witness has sufficient knowledge and expertise in the discipline to be qualified to testify authoritatively about what the discipline and method used says.</p>
<p>In a case like the one identified in the question, and in behavioral science disciplines generally, the first prong is the more challenging one.</p>
<p>Generally speaking, an intent to use expert testimony must be disclosed in advance, and if the judge finds that it will be admissible, the other side in a case is generally entitled to hire a rebuttal expert in the same or an overlapping discipline to testify in response to what the initial expert intends to say. A rebuttal expert might disagree with the conclusions reached by the initial expert as applied to the facts, or might cast doubt on the reliability of the testimony itself.</p>
<p>This in federal court, the proceeding in which this is done prior to trial is called a <a href="https://www.ilnd.uscourts.gov/judge-cmp-detail.aspx?cmpid=952#:%7E:text=Hearing%20Procedures%3A%20The%20Court%2C%20upon,purposes%20of%20evaluating%20its%20admissibility." rel="nofollow noreferrer"><em>Daubert</em> hearing</a> after the leading case on the subject and the primary federal rule of evidence involved in <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/rules/fre/rule_702" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Rule 702</a>. I don't know the terminology that is used in the parallel California state court proceedings, but they are fairly similar.</p>
<ol start="2">
<li>The evidence offered must be relevant to one or more of the elements of the crime or of an affirmative defense to the crime. Until you know precisely what element of the crime or affirmative defense evidence is being offered to prove or disprove, you can't know if it is relevant or not.</li>
</ol>
<p>It is hard to figure out from the question precisely what element of the claim or what affirmative defense is being implicated, but my best guess would be that the claim would be that the fraud was committed under duress, something that the anticipated expert evidence seems unlikely to be sufficient to establish even if proven because the legal definition of duress is quite narrow.</p>
<p>Lots of evidence that can explain why someone did something, while potentially relevant in a sentencing phase of a criminal trial, is not legally relevant in the guilt or innocence phase of a criminal trial because it is not a legally recognized justification.</p>
<p>For example, a dire need for money to care for you sick daughter might explain why you stole money from someone at gunpoint, but that wouldn't be a legally recognized justification for committing the crime, even though at a sentencing phase the judge might choose to be more lenient towards someone who committed a crime for that reason than towards someone who committed a crime in order to buy an expensive sports car.</p>
<p>Also, in addition to the primary rule that allows only relevant evidence to be admitted, there are also subsidiary rules. For example, evidence tending to show that someone has a propensity to commit, or to not commit, a certain kind of crime, is usually not admissible subject to some fairly narrow exceptions.</p>
<p>UPDATE: The Colorado Supreme Court today (September 27, 2021) issued two relevant rulings, <a href="https://www.courts.state.co.us/userfiles/file/Court_Probation/Supreme_Court/Opinions/2019/19SC249.pdf" rel="nofollow noreferrer">here</a> and <a href="https://www.courts.state.co.us/userfiles/file/Court_Probation/Supreme_Court/Opinions/2019/19SC485.pdf" rel="nofollow noreferrer">here</a>, on the use of generalized expert witness testimony regarding domestic violence in criminal cases, that illustrates some of the considerations involved.</p>

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