Opinion ID: 2167035
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Officer Maher's and Officer Flaherty's Testimony

Text: Link first claims that the trial court abused its discretion in allowing Officers Gary Maher and Michael Flaherty to testify that defense witness Caroline Burke's reported sighting of Elissa the morning of the kidnapping was a false sighting. This testimony, Link explains, was nothing more than opinions by the witnesses that Burke was not a credible witness, and, as such, the testimony invaded the province of the jury. Preliminarily, the parties contest whether this point was preserved for review. The transcript reflects that the prosecutor asked Officer Maher: With regard to your conversations with Carol Burke, did you determine whether that was a valid or false sighting? When the witness responded, It was a false sighting, defense counsel immediately objected to the opinion of this officer. Although the state contends that the objection was untimely because the witness had already answered the question, defense counsel had no reason to object before the answer was given. The witness was not asked to give his opinion, but only whether he had an opinion, and an objection at that point would have been premature. Though counsel could have moved for the answer to be stricken as unresponsive, the objection actually made was equally proper and was not untimely. On the other hand, the objection made to the false sightings testimony of Officer Flaherty was insufficient. Defense counsel stated only that I would renew my objection, without specifying what objection was being renewed. In fact, the objection previous to the renewal  the objection to which the renewal logically referred  was an objection to hearsay, not an objection to improper opinion testimony. Accordingly, Officer Flaherty's testimony is reviewable only for plain error upon a showing of manifest injustice under Rule 30.20. On the merits of that part of Link's claim pertaining to the testimony of Officer Maher, the general rule is that expert testimony is inadmissible if it relates to the credibility of witnesses because it invades the province of the jury. State v. Middleton, 998 S.W.2d 520, 527 (Mo. banc 1999), cert. denied, ___ U.S. ___, 120 S.Ct. 1189, 145 L.Ed.2d 1094 (2000). However, it is proper for a witness to testify to specific facts that discredit the testimony of another witness, as long as the witness does not comment directly on the truthfulness of another witness. Stone v. City of Columbia, 885 S.W.2d 744, 747-48 (Mo. App.1994). In the present case, it did not invade the province of the jury for Officer Maher to explain the general concept of false sightings. See State v. Skillicorn, 944 S.W.2d 877, 892 (Mo. banc 1997), cert. denied, 522 U.S. 999, 118 S.Ct. 568, 139 L.Ed.2d 407 (1997) (permissible for FBI agent to explain generic concept that defendants minimize involvement in crime). Nor was it improper for him to state specific facts that tended to discredit Ms. Burke's sighting. See Stone, 885 S.W.2d at 747-48. But it was improper for him to go one step further and say that the police classified the information from Ms. Burke as a false sighting. Despite this error in the admission of Officer Maher's testimony, Link has not shown that he was prejudiced, much less that he suffered manifest injustice due to the admission of Officer Flaherty's testimony. Indeed, the officers' testimony was not as damaging as the testimony of Ms. Burke herself. Although at one point Ms. Burke testified that she was positive she saw Elissa, she said seven times during direct examination that she was not sure that she saw Elissa. She said that as she was driving around the day of the sighting, she saw two different girls at two different locations at almost the same time, but she was not sure which of them she thought was Elissa. She said that on the day of the sighting she told her sister, I'm not sure, but it looks like Elissa. She said that she did not call Elissa's mother that day because she was not sure it was Elissa; that even after she found out that Elissa was missing, she waited two days to report the sighting to police; that she did not tell Elissa's parents about it when she was with them the day after the sighting; that the reason she did not tell anyone was because at that time she was not sure it was Elissa; and that she only reported the sighting when, after mentioning it to someone at her church, that person took her to a third person who then called the police. Ms. Burke also testified that the day she made the sighting it was raining and icing, and that she only glanced at the girls as she drove by them and looked at them in her rear-view mirror. Given the weakness of Ms. Burke's testimony, the impropriety of the officers' false sightings testimony was negligible and certainly not prejudicial. The point is denied.