Hernandez v. City of Albuquerque

Robert Hernandez (plaintiff) engaged police in a high-speed car chase until Hernandez took out a lamppost and hit a wall. Hernandez claimed that after officers took him to the ground and handcuffed him, officer Tom Benard hit him in the back of the head with an asp (a telescoping police baton). Photographs showed blood pooling and spatter pointing away from Hernandez. Emergency-room forms reported a laceration resulting from blunt trauma, and photographs after cleaning showed a half-inch wound on the back of Hernandez’s head. Hernandez sued Benard and the City of Albuquerque (defendants) for assault and battery and use of excessive force. Hernandez retained physicist Dr. Alan Watts to testify that the wound was consistent with an asp blow and the blood pattern consistent with at least a second blow. Watts had extensive experience as an expert on force analysis, shock physics, impact damage effects, and biomechanics—but not medicine, forensic pathology, or police procedure. He had no law enforcement experience and had never seen anyone hit with an asp. However, he had read books about the speed at which an average adult could swing a baseball bat, medical books about the force and types of instruments that cause cuts and lacerations, and forensic analysis books about blood spatter analysis. Before trial, the defense moved to exclude Watts’s testimony on the grounds that he was not qualified to testify about many of his opinions and that his testimony would not help the jury.