State v. Bullard

A jury convicted Vonnie Ray Bullard (defendant) of the 1981 murder of Pedro Hales. The prosecution’s (plaintiff) trial theory was that Bullard repeatedly shot and stabbed Hales and threw Hales into a river from a bridge. The day after Hales was last seen alive, police found lots of blood and a .22-caliber bullet at the bridge. A detective took photographs of two bloody, bare footprints in the sand and asphalt by the bridge. A supervisor at the local evidence laboratory took ink and latex-paint impressions of Bullard’s feet. Dr. Louise Robbins, a physical anthropologist, provided expert testimony in footprint analysis over Bullard’s vigorous objections. Robbins testified that, unlike the traditional fingerprint analysis comparison of tiny ridges in fingerprints, footprint analysis compares the sizes and shapes of four areas of footprints—the heel, arch, ball, and toe regions. In Robbins’s opinion, one of the bloody footprints matched Bullard’s footprint. Robbins testified that she was the only person in the United States to attempt footprint analysis, but a few people in other countries also used the technique. Robbins stated that she testified as an expert in Oklahoma, California, Pennsylvania, and Florida, but no reported decision mentioned Robbins’s footprint-analysis methods. Bullard presented two expert witnesses—two professors at Duke University Medical School’s anatomy department—who testified that Robbins’s method of footprint analysis was inaccurate. Bullard appealed his conviction, arguing in relevant part that the trial court had erred by allowing Robbins to testify as an expert in the field of footprint identification.