Opinion ID: 887287
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Did the District Court abuse its discretion by allowing the State's expert to testify and by limiting the defense's ability to cross-examine her?

Text: ¶ 26 Riggs also argues that the District Court erred in allowing the State's expert witness, Dr. Eugenia Bellante, to testify regarding the interview techniques employed in the investigation. Specifically, Riggs invites us to reconsider our holding in State v. Whitlow (1997), 285 Mont. 430, 949 P.2d 239, that an expert witness who previously served one of the complaining witnesses as a therapist is not thereby disqualified, on objectivity and neutrality grounds, from testifying. We decline his invitation. ¶ 27 In Whitlow, we affirmed the three-part test, set forth in State v. Scheffelman (1991), 250 Mont. 334, 820 P.2d 1293, for whether an expert witness may testify as an expert on child sexual abuse in a given case. These factors are: (1) the expert must have extensive first-hand experience with sexually abused and non-sexually abused children; (2) the expert must have a thorough and up-to-date knowledge of the professional literature on child sexual abuse; and (3) the expert must have objectivity and neutrality about individual cases as required of other experts. The State called the expert in that case to testify regarding the credibility of the witness whom she had previously served as a therapist. We rejected Whitlow's argument that this disqualified her under part three of the test  that she could not be objective and neutral about the case sub judice. ¶ 28 Here, the case is even stronger for allowing the State's expert to testify. Dr. Bellante was called, not to opine on the credibility of the complainants, as was the State's expert in Whitlow, but to testify regarding the interviewing techniques applied in the investigation. Despite the obvious danger that the therapeutic relationship may compromise the therapist's objectivity regarding the credibility of her former client, we refused to disqualify the therapist from offering such testimony in Whitlow. Given the scope of her testimony, the objectivity with which Dr. Bellante could testify regarding the interviewing techniques is much less susceptible of being compromised by her prior relationship to one of the complainants than was the objectivity with which the State's expert in Whitlow could testify regarding the witness's credibility by her therapeutic relationship with the witness. We therefore hold that the District Court did not err in qualifying Dr. Bellante as an expert in this case. ¶ 29 Next, Riggs argues that the District Court denied him the rights guaranteed to him by the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution, and by Article II, Section 24 of the Montana Constitution, when it limited his ability to cross-examine Dr. Bellante, regarding her therapeutic relationship with one of the complaining witnesses, with the intent of exposing bias on her part. We disagree. ¶ 30 As we observed in State v. Nelson, 2002 MT 122, ¶¶ 13-15, 310 Mont. 71, ¶¶ 13-15, 48 P.3d 739, ¶¶ 13-15, the district court is given broad discretion to limit a party's cross-examination of an adverse witness, provided that the party is given a full and fair opportunity to expose bias or motivation to testify falsely on the witness's part. Accordingly, we must in the present case determine whether Riggs was afforded a minimum threshold of inquiry during his cross-examination of Dr. Bellante. Nelson, ¶ 13. ¶ 31 Riggs argues that the District Court barred any inquiry at all into Dr. Bellante's objectivity, thus failing to afford him the constitutional minimum of cross-examination. As a factual matter, Riggs' assertion is erroneous. The complaining witness with whom Dr. Bellante had had a therapeutic relationship did not consent before trial to the disclosure of specific details regarding her treatment by Dr. Bellante, and the District Court barred Riggs' counsel from inquiring along this line. However, defense counsel was permitted to, and did, elicit from Dr. Bellante statements confirming that she had served as a therapist to one of the witnesses. He was also allowed to point out the limitation that the witness's lack of consent to specific disclosures imposed on his inquiry into Dr. Bellante's possible bias, in an attempt to raise doubts in the jurors' minds regarding it. ¶ 32 Although the cross-examination which the District Court afforded Riggs was perhaps not ideal from the Defendant's standpoint, we are satisfied that Riggs' constitutional rights were not violated. The potential source of bias for Dr. Bellante was her relationship with the complaining witness, not the specific details of treatment. Defense counsel devoted several transcript pages' worth of testimony going to this relationship, and the witness's refusal to consent to further disclosures. We conclude that there was no reversible error in the District Court's ruling; that the court acted reasonably; and that the court did not abuse its discretion.