Opinion ID: 1158206
Heading Depth: 5
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: PTSD is probative and will assist the trier of fact.

Text: All of the expert testimony in these two cases establishes that victims of sexual abuse may exhibit identifiable symptoms that have been catalogued in DSM III-R. If a complainant suffers from PTSD symptoms, it indicates that she might have been sexually abused. Thus, testimony regarding a complainant's PTSD symptoms has the tendency to show that she might have been sexually abused. From our perusal of all of the pertinent case law concerning PTSD, we perceive two flaws. First, of the courts that have held PTSD or RTS testimony to be inadmissible to show the cause of the symptoms, several have predicated that ruling, at least in part, upon the assumption that jurors will be awed by the aura of infallibility of expert opinion testimony. See, e.g., State v. Saldana, 324 N.W.2d 227, 230 (Minn. 1982); State v. Taylor, 663 S.W.2d 235, 241 (Mo. 1984) (en banc); Hall, 412 S.E.2d at 890. For example, the Supreme Court of California, quoting Saldana, reasoned that RTS testimony creates an aura of special reliability and trustworthiness that unduly prejudices a defendant, but it then held that the admission of RTS testimony was not prejudicial in that case. See Bledsoe, 203 Cal. Rptr. at 460-61, 681 P.2d at 301-02. As we stated earlier, we are not persuaded that jurors are as enthralled by experts as many appellate courts assume they are. In any event, the jury has the discretion to believe or disbelieve any testimony that it hears. A careful analysis of the opinion in Bledsoe uncovers a second logical inconsistency as Judge Bivins noted in his dissent: that is, admitting PTSD evidence to explain the post-rape behavior of alleged victims but not to show that such behavior is consistent with sexual abuse. The Bledsoe court premised its holding that PTSD is not admissible to prove sexual abuse on the belief that jurors are competent enough to adjudge the significance of the alleged victim's post-rape behavior without the aid of expert testimony, utilizing their common sense to determine whether she consented to intercourse or not. Id., 203 Cal. Rptr. at 460-61, 681 P.2d at 301. Yet it held that PTSD evidence is admissible, for the purpose of rebutting the defense that the victim's behavior is inconsistent with post-rape behavior, to allow an expert to apprise the jurors of the common misconceptions surrounding victims of sexual abuse about which the jurors are presumably ignorant. Id., at 457-58, 681 P.2d at 298. The Court of Appeals in Alberico, relying on Bledsoe, agreed that a psychologist may testify about a diagnosis of PTSD symptoms but not about the cause of the symptoms. The Court claimed that while it is generally accepted that rape victims exhibit identifiable symptoms, PTSD does not allow a psychologist to predict back to the cause of the symptoms. Of course, the Court of Appeals and some of the other courts listed earlier [13] would allow PTSD testimony to rebut the defense of inconsistent behavior only when the defense has made it an issue. The issue, however, is whether PTSD testimony is grounded in scientific knowledge, and the scientific validity of PTSD is not dependent on whether the defense has made it an issue in the case. Allowing an expert to testify that PTSD symptoms are a common reaction to sexual assault for the purpose of rebutting the defense that the victim's reactions to the alleged incident are inconsistent with sexual assault is no different from allowing the expert to testify that the alleged victim's symptoms are consistent with sexual abuse. Although the Court of Appeals and some other courts maintain a bright-line distinction between these two purposes for the admissibility of PTSD testimony, we see no logical difference. Both of these purposes for which PTSD evidence is offered rest on the valid scientific premise that victims of sexual abuse exhibit identifiable symptoms. Either the PTSD diagnosis is a valid scientific technique for identifying certain symptoms of sexual abuse or it is not. Expert testimony in these two cases show that it is valid.