United States of America v. Michael Stefan Prime - CEDAR

4986 UNITED STATES v. PRIMEdetermination of whether the proposed expert testimony isreliable. Id. at 152. Accordingly, we review the district court’sdecision to admit or deny expert testimony for abuse of discretion.Id.In accordance with Kumho Tire, the broad discretion andflexibility given to trial judges to determine how and to whatdegree these factors should be used to evaluate the reliabilityof expert testimony dictate a case-by-case review rather thana general pronouncement that in this Circuit handwriting analysisis reliable. As the Supreme Court concluded,we can neither rule out, nor rule in, for all cases andfor all time the applicability of the factors mentionedin Daubert, nor can we now do so for subsets ofcases categorized by category of expert or by kind ofevidence. Too much depends upon the particular circumstancesof the particular case at issue.Id. at 150; see also United States v. Hankey, 203 F.3d 1160,1168 (9th Cir. 2000) (quoting Skidmore v. Precision Printingand Packaging, Inc., 188 F.3d 606, 618 (5th Cir. 1999)(“Whether Daubert’s suggested indicia of reliability apply toany given testimony depends on the nature of the issue athand, the witness’s particular expertise, and the subject of thetestimony. It is a fact-specific inquiry.”) (internal citationsomitted)).In this case, Storer was given 112 pages of writing knownto be Prime’s, 114 pages of Hiestand’s, and 14 pages ofHardy’s. She was then asked whether the handwriting on 76documents associated with the alleged conspiracy, such asenvelopes, postal forms, money orders, Post-it notes, expressmail labels and postal box applications, belonged to any of theco-conspirators. 3Storer “identified” Prime’s handwriting on45 of the documents.3 Prime has not raised as an issue, and we have no reason to believe, thatthe questioned writing samples were of insufficient length to support avalid analysis.