Opinion ID: 2636693
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 12

Heading: Mother's Questioning

Text: For Wells' second claim that the trial court erred in disallowing expert testimony on how certain procedures and techniques could adversely affect the reliability and accuracy of a child's statement, he contends Nichols should have been allowed to criticize the way R.B. questioned her daughter, C.B., the morning of the incident. Wells sought to have Nichols testify that R.B. asked C.B. suggestive and leading questions, apparently as gleaned from R.B.'s written statement memorializing the interview. The trial court ruled that only Detective Runyan's videotaped interviews of the three children could be critiqued by Nichols. As mentioned, Nichols testified that she criticized Runyan's videotaped interviews because, among other things, they did not simply elicit a story from each of the children and then follow up with directed questions. Wells now argues that it was important for the jury to know that the questioning of C.B. by the mother was also defective in that way. We observe Wells candidly admits that Nichols was allowed to testify that one of her criterion for proper questioning was to avoid multiple interviews of the child witnesses, including unsupervised questioning by family members. She also testified that this practice was not followed because multiple interviews were conductedwhich would necessarily include R.B.'s interview of C.B. Wells' brief also expressly directs us to the trial transcript to show that the process of mother's questioning of C.B. was testified to extensively by [R.B.]. The transcript also reveals, however, that Wells' counsel was able to cross-examine R.B. at length and to criticize her interview approach. For example, he asked several questions about how R.B. questioned her daughters after she returned home the morning of the incident. The transcript also shows that counsel asked multiple questions about the exact questions she asked and their sequence. He then confirmed that she did ask those types of questions. Counsel also forced R.B. to admit that a word used in her testimony, winky, was not used in the home by her children, perhaps suggesting she placed that word and others in C.B.'s mouth during her questioning. In short, he had ample opportunity to cross-examine R.B. on her purported use of leading and suggestive questions and other doubtful techniques, e.g., her purported failure to allow her 5-year-old daughter to first simply tell the story and then ask direct questions of C.B. We conclude that even though Nichols was not allowed to testify critically about R.B.'s interviewing approach with her daughter, her testimony on this subject was not necessary to the jury's decision. The jurors heard Nichols' specific criticisms of the techniques of trained interviewer Detective Runyan. This included her opinion that as a result of leading questions, information could have been provided to C.B. that she did not know which then contaminates the interview.' The trial court was within its discretion in determining that the jurors did not need Nichols to repeat many of these same criticisms about similar techniques used by an untrained mother with her daughter, especially when defense counsel addressed them on cross-examination. See Cooperwood, 282 Kan. 572, Syl. ¶ 5, 147 P.3d 125 (necessity under the particular circumstances of the case is the basis for the admissibility of expert witness testimony). In short, Wells was able to present evidence to the jury of problems existing with the mother's interviewing approach.