The State, Respondent, v. Tyrone Anthony Wallace Jr., Petitioner.
Appellate Case No. 2021-000332
THE STATE OF SOUTH CAROLINA In The Supreme Court
August 30, 2023
Opinion No. 28175
AFFIRMED
Appellate Defender Susan Barber Hackett, of Columbia, for Petitioner.
Attorney General Alan McCrory Wilson, Senior Assistant Deputy Attorney General Melody Jane Brown, W. Jeffrey Young, and William Joseph Maye, of Columbia; Isaac McDuffie Stone III, of Bluffton, all for Respondent.
I. Facts and Procedural History
On October 25, 2015, Andre Frazier went to a house on Greene Street in the City of Beaufort looking for his friend Vermone Steve, whom everyone called Mony. Mony lived at the Greene Street house with Varsheen Smith. At the house, Frazier found only Wallace and Smith. Wallace and Smith tied up Frazier and held him at gunpoint. They released Frazier a few minutes later when they learned police officers were in the area on an unrelated call. Frazier left Greene Street without immediately speaking to the officers. Three days later, a Beaufort police investigator interviewed Frazier about Mony‘s disappearance. Frazier told the investigator Wallace and Smith tied him up at gunpoint. On November 18, Beaufort County Sheriff‘s deputies discovered remains of Mony‘s body near Pea Patch Road on Saint Helena Island in Beaufort County.
At trial, the State presented evidence Wallace waited for Mony at the Greene Street house, and shot and killed Mony when he arrived not long after he and Smith kidnapped and
The State called an investigator in the Solicitor‘s office named Dylan Hightower as an expert witness. Hightower used CSLI to create a map showing Wallace‘s cell phone was near the Greene Street house and then traveled to and from the Pea Patch Road area at specific times on the night of the murder and early the following morning. The State proposed to have Hightower testify—using the map—Wallace‘s phone connected to four cell towers during the trip, two in particular: one 327 yards from the Greene Street house and the other 2.67 miles from the Pea Patch Road location.
The trial court conducted a lengthy pre-trial hearing and ruled Hightower was qualified as an expert under
II. Standard of Review
We review a trial court‘s ruling on the admission or exclusion of evidence—when the ruling is based on the South Carolina Rules of Evidence—under an abuse of discretion standard. See, e.g., State v. Phillips, 430 S.C. 319, 340, 844 S.E.2d 651, 662 (2020) (citing State v. Dickerson, 395 S.C. 101, 116, 716 S.E.2d 895, 903 (2011)); State v. Council, 335 S.C. 1, 21, 515 S.E.2d 508, 518 (1999) (citing State v. Von Dohlen, 322 S.C. 234, 248, 471 S.E.2d 689, 697 (1996)). We will not reverse a trial court‘s ruling on an evidence question unless we find the court abused its discretion, or—recognizing the term “abuse of discretion” can be a bit harsh2—unless we find
Our statements in cases like Jones and King mean the trial court—when ruling on the admission or exclusion of evidence—must think through the objection that has been made, the arguments of the attorneys, and the law—particularly the applicable evidentiary rules—and must thoughtfully apply the correct law to the information and evidence before it. We recently discussed the thought process inherent in the exercise of discretion in Morris v. BB&T Corp., 438 S.C. 582, 587, 885 S.E.2d 394, 397 (2023). As we explained in Morris, if the record reflects the trial court “exercise[ed] its discretion according to law,” we will almost always affirm the ruling. Morris, 438 S.C. at 585-86, 885 S.E.2d at 396; see also State v. Gibbs, 438 S.C. 542, 551-53, 885 S.E.2d 378, 383-84 (2023) (discussing in detail a trial court‘s exercise of discretion in ruling on the admissibility of evidence); State v. Herrera, 425 S.C. 558, 562, 823 S.E.2d 923, 925 (2019) (although the witness‘s “qualifications as an expert present a close question, under our deferential standard of review, we find no abuse of discretion in qualifying him as an expert“); Phillips, 430 S.C. at 340-41, 844 S.E.2d at 662 (reversing a trial court‘s ruling to admit expert testimony when the trial court did not “meaningfully exercise that discretion” and “we are actually conducting the analysis for the first time“); Hamrick v. State, 426 S.C. 638, 648-49, 828 S.E.2d 596, 601 (2019) (holding the trial court erred because it “failed to make the necessary findings that the State established the foundation required by Rule 702“). As we will explain, the trial court in this case thoughtfully applied a sound view of
III. Analysis
Wallace argues Hightower was not qualified to testify as an expert in the analysis of CSLI.
We begin by addressing an undercurrent in Wallace‘s arguments that the fact Hightower was employed by the prosecutor in the case renders him unqualified under
A trial court‘s analysis of whether an expert is qualified is affected by the complexity of the “scientific, technical, or . . . specialized knowledge” to which the witness will be called to testify. When expert testimony is scientific in nature, or when it is based on more complex technical or specialized knowledge, the witness providing the testimony will need a greater degree of “knowledge, skill, experience, training, or education” to be qualified. Compare Hamrick, 426 S.C. at 649, 828 S.E.2d at 602 (stating, “Accident reconstruction is a highly technical and specialized field in which experts employ principles
In this case, Hightower testified about issues ranging from quite simple to fairly complex. For example, Hightower testified the phone number in question belonged to Wallace and explained what phone numbers the cell phone records showed Wallace‘s phone called that night. This testimony required a relatively low degree of expertise because it was based on mechanical interpretations of the information in the call records.5 Hightower‘s more complex testimony, however, required a greater level of expertise. Hightower created a map that showed the Greene Street house, the Pea Patch Road location, and four cell towers. He explained to the jury which cell towers Wallace‘s phone connected to at what times on the night of the crimes. He also explained the reasons a phone would connect to one cell tower as opposed to another and concluded that a phone at the Greene Street house would
Our court of appeals has analyzed the testimony of CSLI experts in several cases. In each of those cases, the witness provided expert testimony—using a methodology similar to Hightower‘s—that a defendant‘s phone traveled to and from a crime scene. In each case, the expert the trial court found “qualified” had different levels of knowledge, skill, experience, training, and education. In Warner, for example, the CSLI expert was an FBI special agent who had 800 hours of CSLI training; had been trained by all major cell carriers; and was an instructor to federal, state, and local agencies. 430 S.C. at 84, 842 S.E.2d at 364-65. In State v. Young, 432 S.C. 535, 854 S.E.2d 615 (Ct. App. 2021), the court of appeals found a South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED) expert “has the requisite knowledge, skill, experience, and training” because he “performed cell phone location analysis in over 200 cases[,] . . . was trained by the FBI‘s Cellular Analysis Survey Team[,] and received additional training from private entities.” 432 S.C. at 543-44, 854 S.E.2d at 619. In State v. Franks, 432 S.C. 58, 849 S.E.2d 580 (Ct. App. 2020), the court of appeals found a Sheriff‘s Office sergeant who used a software called “GeoTime” qualified as an expert because “he had fifteen years’ experience working with call records and cell phone technology,” went to “several” seminars about the software, and used it in “approximately fifty cases over . . . three or four years.” 432 S.C. at 76, 849 S.E.2d at 590.
In this case, Hightower had fewer hours of training and years of experience than the FBI special agent in Warner, the SLED expert in Young, and perhaps the Sheriff‘s sergeant in Franks. However, the trial court conducted a robust pre-trial review of Hightower‘s qualifications and listened to a proffer of his testimony to determine whether he was nevertheless qualified. The court stated at the outset of the pre-trial hearing, “I . . . know what the science is,” and then—speaking to the assistant solicitor—stated, “I just want to know what you‘re trying to get out of him at trial.” The court asked “how close of a location or where [Hightower] put[s] . . . any of these people at any specific time, how close to a site?” The court was clearly attempting to gauge the complexity of the knowledge underlying Hightower‘s testimony, and specifically
Hightower then explained his training and education in CSLI which included: an internship with SLED; a four-week “on-the-job training” at the SLED Fusion Center, including training for basic knowledge of cell phone forensics and cellular analyses; a one-week “PenLink” call analysis training school at SLED about how to read and map cell phone records; a two-day course called “Fundamentals of Call Detail Records Analysis,” which he testified taught him “how to read the records, how to map them, [and] an understanding of how sectors work“; another one-day training class on mobile forensics; a two-day class through the FBI “CAST” Unit on historical cell site analysis; and other courses. He explained these courses totaled at least seventy-two hours of training, and they included training by the FBI in the CASTViz program.7
The trial court then required Hightower to make “a full proffer” of his testimony because she stated—her ruling would depend on “the science of it” and “how close he can get” to placing Wallace near the site of the murder and where the body was found. At various times during his proffer, the trial court interrupted him to ask questions, such as, “How can you get that specific? How can you get to 2.67?” On this point, Hightower explained the basis of his conclusion that one of the towers Wallace‘s phone connected to was 2.67 miles from the Pea Patch Road location.
After the proffer, the trial court again discussed with the attorneys the complexity of the testimony the State sought from Hightower. “So the State is asking that he be qualified as an expert in historical cell phone data, okay? That would allow him to just interpret what the cell phone records say. That doesn‘t allow him to testify to the location services.” The trial court thus remained focused on understanding the complexity of Hightower‘s testimony, distinguishing between “the simple fact of just extracting the data from the cell phones” and the more complex task of “tracking” the phone‘s exact
From the trial court‘s “robust” examination of Hightower, this Court can clearly see the trial court understood and exercised its responsibility as gatekeeper. See Phillips, 430 S.C. at 334, 844 S.E.2d at 659 (“We have repeatedly enforced the requirement that trial courts exercise their gatekeeping responsibility in admitting expert testimony.“). The court understood the second
IV. Conclusion
We affirm the court of appeals and hold the trial court acted within its discretion by admitting Hightower‘s testimony because he was sufficiently qualified as an expert to testify about his analysis of Wallace‘s cell site location information.
AFFIRMED.
BEATTY, C.J., KITTREDGE, JAMES, JJ., and Acting Justice Kaye G. Hearn, concur.