Title: State v. Wetherbee

State: vermont

Issuer: Vermont Supreme Court

Document:

NOTICE:  This opinion is subject to motions for reargument under V.R.A.P. 40
as well as formal revision before publication in the Vermont Reports.
Readers are requested to notify the Reporter of Decisions, Vermont Supreme
Court, 111 State Street, Montpelier, Vermont 05602 of any errors in order
that corrections may be made before this opinion goes to press.


                                No. 89-633


State of Vermont                             Supreme Court

                                             On Appeal from
     v.                                      District Court of Vermont,
                                             Unit No. 2, Chittenden Circuit

Lee A. Wetherbee                             October Term, 1990


Frank G. Mahady, J.

Jeffrey L. Amestoy, Attorney General, and David Tartter, Assistant Attorney
  General, Montpelier, for plaintiff-appellee

Wool, Murdoch & Hughes, Burlington, for defendant-appellant


PRESENT:  Allen, C.J., Dooley and Morse, JJ., and Peck, J. (Ret.) and
          Cashman, D.J., Specially Assigned


     MORSE, J.   The principal issue in this appeal from a conviction for
lewd or lascivious conduct with a child, 13 V.S.A. { 2602, is whether an
examining psychologist's testimony about the child's account of how the
crime happened, and who did it, was harmless error.  The testimony was an
impermissible expert opinion that the child-victim was believable.  The
error was sufficiently prejudicial to require reversal of the conviction,
and accordingly we remand for a new trial.
                                    I.
     Defendant was alleged to have fondled the genitals of his then three-
year-old daughter while she was visiting him after her parents' divorce.
The State's first witness, a clinical psychologist, testified about symptoms
commonly exhibited by child victims of sexual abuse, gave his opinion that
the child had suffered a traumatic experience, and then repeated in detail
the child's statements to him as the basis of that opinion.
     This set the stage for the child's testimony about how the abuse
occurred.  Her entire testimony on the incident was less than two transcript
pages, consisting of short answers to leading questions posed by the State.
         State:  Did anything bad ever happen when you went to
                 visit your Daddy?
         Child:  Mm-hmm.
         State:  Can you tell me what happened?
                 . . .
         Child:  He touched me.
         State:  Where did he touch you?
         Child:  My bum.
         State:  Did you like that?
         Child:  No.
                 . . .
         State:  When your Daddy touched you, do you remember
                 where you were?
                 . . .
         Child:  At his house.
                 . . .
         State:  Did you tell your Mommy about what happened?
         Child:  Yes.
         State:  And why did you tell your Mommy?
         Child:  'Cause it wasn't good.

She was then asked to identify "Daddy" and pointed to defendant.
     The remainder of the State's case consisted of testimony by a social
worker, who testified that she had investigated the charge and passed on
information to the state's attorney, and the child's mother.  The mother
testified that the child had been "very upset and clinging to [defendant]
and looked very scared" when she returned from a visit to defendant's house.
She testified that, a few days later, while giving the child a bath, she
discovered that the child's vaginal area was "very red and irritated."  She
then recounted how the child told her about the alleged abuse.
I was washing her vaginal area and she said to me:
         "Mommy don't hurt me."  . . .  I said:  "Who would ever
         hurt you?"  And she said that "Daddy does.  . . . Daddy
         puts his fingers inside my bummy and he hurts me."

     Thus, the State's case-in-chief relied upon the sparse testimony of the
child, who was three years and ten-and-a-half months old when the abuse
allegedly occurred and four years and eleven months old when she testified.
That testimony was supplemented with the psychologist's and mother's
recounting of the child's story.
     Defendant objected to the psychologist's testimony in two pretrial
motions and during the course of the trial on the grounds that it
constituted inadmissible hearsay.  Before the expert's testimony was
presented, the court cautioned the jury to restrict the use in their
deliberations of the victim's statements to the expert.  They were asked to
be "very, very, careful" and told to use the testimony for "one purpose, and
one purpose only"--as the basis of the expert's opinion--not as evidence of
whether the abuse occurred or whether the child was telling the truth.  The
court concluded the instruction by telling the jury, "I realize it's a
difficult task, and it's the kind of thinking we don't normally do every
day, but we have to do it here."  The State proceeded with questioning:
         State:   Doctor, during your clinical interview of
                  [the child], did [she] go on to make any
                  statements to you about problems she had had
                  or was having?
         Expert:  Yes, she did. . . . I asked if anyone ever
                  hurt you, and she didn't answer but with a nod
                  of her head that looked to me to be yes.  I
                  asked her did anyone ever touch you in a not
                  nice way.  She was silent there.
                  . . . I asked then about a number of people in
                  the family.  Did Daddy ever touch you in a not
                  nice way?
         State:   Was she able to respond?
         Expert:  She said, "Yes."
         State:   What did she tell you?
         Expert:  . . . I asked her . . . where had Daddy touched
                  you? She said:  "On the bum."
                  . . .
         State:   Did she tell you where she was when this
                  happened?
                  . . .
         Expert:  It was at the house, her father's house, her
                  daddy's house.  May I make a distinction of
                  daddy she uses?

     At this point the defense again objected, maintaining that the
testimony was going beyond the expert's opinion of whether the victim had
been traumatized and instead was focusing on who the perpetrator was.  The
court allowed questioning to proceed to clarify which father, the genetic
father or the stepfather, was being referred to.  The testimony continued,
and the expert identified defendant as the perpetrator:
         State:   Dr. Rightmyer, did [the child] identify who
                  Daddy was?
                  . . .
         Expert:  Daddy.  Daddy was Lee.

     The court allowed this testimony despite the State's acknowledgment
that its purpose was to clarify the identity of the child's abuser and
respond to defendant's reliance on a misidentification defense, that is,
that the child had been abused by her stepfather, not defendant.
     The child's credibility was the central issue at trial.  Several of
defendant's relatives testified that the child frequently lied.
Defendant's live-in girlfriend stated that she was working at home on the
day of the alleged incident, that she could see into the child's bedroom
from her desk, and that the abuse never occurred.  Defendant's mother, who
was extremely close to defendant's ex-wife, alleged that the ex-wife had
told her she was considering fabricating an abuse charge in order to gain
full custody of the child.  A medical doctor testified that the child's
vaginal irritation could have been caused by the recurrence of a yeast
infection for which he had treated the child several times.  In addition,
there was considerable controversy about the child's description of her
body.  For example, defendant and his girlfriend testified that the child
referred to both her anus and her vagina as her "bummy," while several
witnesses for the State asserted that she used the term only when referring
to her vagina.  On the key issue of the abuser's identity, several witnesses
for the State testified that the child referred only to defendant as
"Daddy," while those appearing for defendant, mostly relatives, said that
the child used the word "Daddy" to refer to both her father and her
stepfather.  On rebuttal, after the defense had attacked the child's
credibility with statements by defendant's relatives that she frequently
lied, the State called a baby-sitter and a teacher to testify about the
child's truthfulness.
                                II.
     The State concedes that the psychologist's account of what the victim
told him during his examination of her was error under our recent decision
in State v. Gokey, 154 Vt. 129, 574 A.2d 766 (1990).  There we stated:
         While [experts] may state that the complaining witness
         exhibits symptoms typical of sexually abused children,
         [they] may not . . . go so far as to conclude that the
         witness is a victim of sexual abuse. . . . [Expert]
         testimony, beyond a limited description of the profile
         and the opinion that the child's behaviors [are]
         consistent with that profile, [is] inadmissible under
         V.R.E. 702.

Id. at 134, 140, 574 A.2d  at 768, 772.  The expert's testimony went well
beyond these limits.  Nonetheless, the State argues that admission of this
testimony was harmless, maintaining that, when the "error is merely of an
evidentiary rule," the standard of review requires the defendant to
demonstrate "prejudice sufficient to overcome the jury's verdict."  State v.
Jarvis, 145 Vt. 8, 14,