Zailey Hess sued former Hammond police officer Jamie Garcia, alleging that he sexually assaulted and harassed her during a ride-along for her criminal justice class in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses.
Garcia filed a motion to exclude the testimony of Hess’ expert witness, Dan Kender.
Law Enforcement Expert Witness
Daniel R. Kender worked as a Hammond police officer for 28 years, including as a patrol officer, evidence technician, traffic crash investigator, accident reconstructionist, field training officer (including educating ride-along participants), law enforcement instructor, and police sergeant.
Over that time, he participated in various law enforcement training. He holds a bachelor’s degree in computer information systems and a master’s degree in cybersecurity and digital forensics. Kender is an assistant professor of computer science, though he has worked privately in crash reconstruction since 2000—first for another business, and for himself since 2008.
Discussion by the Court
Garcia asked the Court to exclude all of Kender’s prospective testimony, arguing that he (1) may not testify to a witness’ credibility, (2) isn’t needed or qualified to testify on whether Garcia’s ride-along conduct was inappropriate based on Hammond’s policies or a seatbelt’s functionality, and (3) isn’t qualified to testify on sexual grooming or the behavior of a victim of sexual assault or harassment.
A. Opinion on the Believability of Hess’ Accusations
Kender reviewed Hess’ recollections of their ride-alongs with Garcia and opined that her accusations appeared genuine because fabricated accounts tend to be more exaggerated, while Garcia’s recollections struck him as inconsistent.
Garcia said that Kender lacked the requisite qualifications in psychology or human behavior to reach this opinion and added that his credibility opinion cannot help the jury.
The latter is what prevents him from being an expert here. Qualifications aside, and those remain in doubt, an opinion witness cannot sift through the testimony of others, tell the jury whom to believe, or otherwise argue the implication of seeming inconsistencies. The jury alone performs the job of assessing the credibility of witnesses, and it needs no help. Kender acknowledged that this takes no expertise beyond the common sense of each juror.
B. Opinions on the Propriety of Garcia’s Conduct under Hammond Police Department Ride-Along Policies and Training
Kender’s report described the purposes and procedures of a ride-along with the Hammond Police Department. He described the ride-along program as fostering positive police-community relations and educating the public on police functions.
Based on his prior work as a field training officer and experience leading educational ride-alongs, he opined about the training Hammond law enforcement officers receive and the objectives they acknowledge to guide their ride-alongs with members of the public.
Jurors may have early impressions about ride-alongs, or either heard of them or even participated in one, and perhaps have early impressions about their goals for both the public and police agency; but Kender would offer something specialized to understand their dynamics, objectives, and the training that goes into making sure that police officers handle them safely. He has the credentials to speak to these issues, and his method of offering these opinions grows out of his training, his training of others, and the policies in place at the Hammond Police Department.
Beyond this scope of testimony and the context it provides the jury, the jury truly needs no help. Nor is there anything particularly expert about anything else.
C. Opinions on the Behavior of a Victim of Sexual Misconduct and on Sexual Grooming Behavior
Kender sought to opine that Hess’ account of Garcia’s ride-along conduct was consistent with sexual grooming by predatory child molesters. He stated that he based this opinion on his training and experience as a police officer, his review of the record, and a 2017 article about grooming behaviors by predatory child molesters.
Garcia argued that Kender lacked the necessary qualifications to testify about grooming behavior or a victim’s common reactions to sexual assault. He said that Kender merely read transcripts rather than interviewing or observing any witnesses, and that his opinion lacked a scientific method.
Analysis
Kender worked as a police officer for 28 years. His curriculum vitae reflects fairly standard training at the Indiana Law Enforcement Academy and at the Northwest Indiana Law Enforcement Training Center, and it seems over the years he developed particular focuses in crash investigation, forensics (including computer forensics), and training of officers. None of this screams out expertise in sexual grooming. That said, he testified that he worked traffic part of the time, but also worked patrol involving cases of child molesting, sexual battery, and rape. He received some training on sexual grooming at the academy, and he later served as a field training officer and evidence technician when he “handled a lot more of [these] cases then.”
While Kender hasn’t specialized professionally in sex crimes or psychology, the Court held that he may speak to patterns of sexual grooming insofar as his training and experience take him.
Garcia also criticized Kender’s method, except that Kender outlines specific signs or dynamics of sexual grooming (something well beyond his say-so); and he thereby provided a roadmap for his application of these and his decision-making toward an opinion, and decision-making not unlike what law enforcement officers often would make in the field.
Aspects of grooming may be intuitive to some jurors, and jurors will need no help understanding that much of the alleged behavior would be not just unprofessional but unreasonable by a police officer to commit; but other aspects about grooming or a victim’s sometimes-less-than-intuitive reactions to sexual assault will be invariably foreign to them, so this opinion about grooming will aid in their understanding of its markers and the constitutional impropriety of such behavior during a ride-along.
Held
The Court granted in part and denied in part Jamie Garcia’s motion to exclude Daniel Kender’s opinions.
Key Takeaway
Kender offered something by way of specialized knowledge to understand the objectives and training associated specifically with ride-alongs. The jury gets to decide whether Garcia’s conduct violated the Constitution with the aid of that context, but without need of more.
For instance, jurors understand driving safety and the importance of having two hands on a steering wheel (or not). Jurors can assess whether physical contact or sexualized conversations between an officer and minor passenger (or with a sex worker) are discriminatory rather than serve any legitimate government objective.
Case Details:
| Case Caption: | Hess V. Garcia |
| Docket Number: | 3:21cv101 |
| Court Name: | United States District Court, Indiana Northern |
| Order Date: | March 13, 2026 |
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