The 911 audio recording may be played during Zimmerman’s trial, but Judge Debra Nelson ruled that prosecution experts will not be allowed to testify about the identity of the person screaming on the tape.
Prosecutors fought hard during pretrial hearings to allow the expert testimony to be included. The testimony was important to the prosecutors because the experts casted doubt on Zimmerman’s claims of self-defense.
However, the two expert witnesses appear to contradict each other. Thomas Owen, one of the experts, claims that the screaming voice belongs to Zimmerman. Alan Reich, a different expert, claims that the voice on the tape is Martin.
"I've never come across a case in my 13 years where anybody's tried to compare screaming to a normal voice," British audio expert Peter French told the Associated Press.
Zimmerman’s lawyers successfully argued that the contradictory testimony could confuse jurors. The defense also claimed that the expert’s identification techniques were faulty. Current law says that scientific techniques must be widely accepted by the industry in question before they will be allowed in court as evidence.
“It’s not founded in science anywhere,” Don West told
the New York Times.