Opinion ID: 1942822
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Competency of the child witness

Text: The defendant claims on appeal that Mary Ann's testimony was inadmissible, because, so he argues, she was unable to clearly establish by any positive examples that she understood the difference between right and wrong except in response to the leading questions of the attorney for the State.  (Emphasis supplied). No error was committed by the presiding Justice in receiving Mary Ann's testimony over the defendant's objections. Initially, let us say that there was no impropriety in allowing the prosecutor on voir dire to ask leading questions to the 10-year old prosecutrix. In a prosecution for taking indecent liberties with the sexual organs of such a minor female prosecutrix, the action of the presiding Justice in permitting counsel for the State, in preliminary examination to determine competency, to address leading questions to the 10-year old child was within the Court's sound discretion and no abuse of discretion has been shown. See State v. Bennett, 158 Me. 109, 179 A.2d 812 (1962); State v. Bragg, 141 Me. 157, 40 A.2d 1 (1944). In regard to the issue of competency, the rule has been laid down in previous cases of this Court. A child's competency to testify depends on a showing to the satisfaction of the trial justice that the proposed child witness is sufficiently mature (1) to understand questions and narrate answers intelligently, (2) to receive accurate impressions of facts by his senses, be able to recollect them correctly and have the capacity to relate a true version of the impressions received, (3) to have some understanding of the difference between truth and falsehood. State v. Hodgkins, Me., 238 A.2d 41 (1968); State v. Ranger, 149 Me. 52, 98 A.2d 652 (1953). In relation to the child's comprehension of the truth and falsehood concepts, a young child's testimonial competency may be said to be sufficient, if the child appears to have capacity to understand, in some measure, the obligation of an oath or, in practical conception, the capacity to realize that it is wrong to falsify and that if he does tell an untruth he is likely to be punished. State v. Ranger, supra; State v. Brewer, Me., 325 A.2d 26, 27 (1974). The question of competency of a child to testify is addressed to the discretion of the presiding justice. State v. Hodgkins, supra; State v. Beckwith, 158 Me. 174, 180 A.2d 605 (1962). In the instant case, the record fully supports the presiding Justice's determination that Mary Ann was competent to testify, notwithstanding that she could not volunteer specific examples of something right and something wrong and answered generally that she did not know the difference between good and evil beyond her articulation that [r]ight means you do something right, and wrong means if you do something wrong, you did it wrong. From the totality of the voir dire examination, we cannot say that there was an abuse of discretion in adjudicating the ten-year old witness competent to testify.