Opinion ID: 2518840
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: Alyssa's documentary evidence

Text: Alyssa alleges that she submitted four psychological evaluations to the court indicating that she did not have a mental illness. She claims that the court ignored those evaluations and failed to acknowledge that she completed her case plan. It is only apparent from the record that Alyssa submitted two documents to the department containing psychological information. One document was a brief, handwritten progress report prepared by an unidentified psychologist on December 4, 2003. It does not appear to set out any formal diagnosis. The second document was a psychological evaluation from Dr. Anita Kemp, who Alyssa claimed was going to testify at trial on her behalf. Dr. Kemp's evaluation stated that there was no current evidence that Alyssa suffered from depression. The superior court did not ignore Dr. Kemp's evaluation, but rather found it to be unreliable for several reasons. First, Alyssa had not advised the department before the evaluation so that it could communicate with Dr. Kemp about the purposes of the evaluation and provide the doctor with collateral information. Second, the court found that Alyssa had thoroughly misled Dr. Kemp by circling zero for every indicator of depression and mental illness when Dr. Kemp evaluated her. And finally, during the trial, the state published into the record a more recent letter from Dr. Kemp stating that her earlier evaluation was not applicable in a matter of child custody because Dr. Kemp did not cover Alyssa's parenting or custody issues during the evaluation. We have consistently held that it is the role of the trial court, and not this court, to judge the credibility of any witnesses and to weigh conflicting evidence. [40] Because the record showed that Dr. Kemp's evaluation was not fully informed and was not directed to the custody issue, the superior court could properly discount the evaluation and give more weight instead to the testimony of the department's expert psychologist, who testified that Alyssa suffered from severe psychological problems.