Opinion ID: 1135325
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Pretrial Competency Hearing

Text: After the preliminary hearing but before trial, the district court conducted competency hearings to determine whether the child witnesses were competent to testify. The court initially limited the scope of the hearings to issues of competency, but later decided to rule on the reliability and admissibility of the hearsay statements that the State intended to offer. Appellants' primary challenge to the competency of Susan and Patricia to testify and the reliability of their accusations was that the children were too young to have any clear or reliable recollection of what occurred at the day care center. And, if they did have any independent recollections, they were irreparably altered by the coercive and suggestive interviewing of the police and psychologists. The expert for the defense was Dr. Lee Coleman, a practicing psychiatrist who specialized in the investigation and treatment of CSA. After reviewing all of the children's videotapes and transcripts of the audio interviews with them, he found fundamental errors in the investigation techniques. First, Dr. Coleman strongly objected to the assumption by the police and psychologists who interviewed the children that sexual abuse or something very bad had taken place. He was especially critical of the psychologists' practice of not accepting the children's denials that something had happened, and of the repetition of questions to which an affirmative answer was sought. He thought it highly probable the children had learned a great deal by the psychologists' questioning and stated: And in my opinion the explanation of why children are saying these things has been presented to the court right on these tapes. It's coming from the interviewers who have got these ideas so firmly planted in their mind that they are transmitting to the children. Dr. Coleman believed this transmission occurred by the psychologists giving the children the impression that something bad had happened at the day care center and the interviewers then indicating they would be pleased if the children would recite or confirm such information. In his criticism of the interviewing techniques used by Patricia's psychologist, Dr. Coleman explained: I can't think of a worse way to do it than this, because what basically the message they're giving to the child is when you tell us something bad happened we will believe you and we will praise you. When you say it didn't happen we will doubt you, we will ask whether or not you were afraid to tell us or whether you were threatened into not telling us, and we will keep on asking you and we will let you know that until you tell us that it did happen we will keep after you. Concerning the coercive and suggestive questioning techniques, Dr. Coleman stated: [A] child can end up with a mental picture of all kinds of things having happened that didn't happen. And what's terribly important is sincerely believing in those events just as much as if they did happen, and terribly important as well is reacting emotionally and in a harmful way just as much as if they did happen. Because of the lack of spontaneity by the children in reporting these incidents, the time between the events and their disclosure, and what he considered to be the coercive and suggestive interviewing techniques, Dr. Coleman concluded that it was highly questionable whether Susan and Patricia could differentiate between what they remembered and what the psychologists had suggested. With regard to Patricia, Dr. Coleman concluded that her testimony was rendered totally incompetent by the improper interviewing techniques. With regard to Susan, he stated that because of her young age when at the day care center, and because of the contamination of improper questioning, she would be unable to distinguish between what she actually remembered and what she learned through the interviewing process. The State countered Dr. Coleman's testimony with that of Dr. Roland Summit, a child psychiatrist. Although he acknowledged that the investigation was not ideal and some of the questioning of the children was suggestive, he did not believe the children's independent recollection of events at the day care center had been irreparably damaged. He stated that it has not been well established that a child can be made to believe something happened that actually did not by suggestive and repetitive questioning. He stated: The assumption that children can be moved into believing that they have experienced a complex and traumatic set of circumstances because of leading questions or repeated interviews or the suggestions from important people, that's not well established in any empiric data or data. Dr. Samantha Payne, the psychologist who interviewed Susan after psychologist Fisher had questioned her a number of times, stated that Susan was competent to testify and was not fantasizing about the events to which she testified. Shortly before trial, the district court heard argument concerning the competence of the child-victims to testify and the trustworthiness of their hearsay statements. It was clear that the court was actually determining competence, whether the children were capable of telling the truth, not whether their hearsay statements were affirmatively reliable. In making its ruling concerning Susan, the court stated: Now, first of all, my decision is notI want everybody to understand, I don't express any opinion as to whether the child is telling the truth or not. That's not my decision. My decision is that, is the child capable of telling the truth, not is the child telling the truth. The court stressed that it would leave veracity and reliability to the jury: The next question is, has she been so manipulated or exposed or maneuvered so her competency has been destroyed? And, as a matter of law, I can't say she has. She had some very unusual and strange things to relate. Whether they are true or not is a question of fact that a jury is uniquely capable of discovering.... .... ... So Susan ... will be allowed to testify, both as to today's events and her testimony to third persons, including her mother and others, will be admitted into evidence. The court did not immediately announce its decision with regard to Patricia's competence or the reliability of her hearsay statements, but subsequently found that Patricia was competent to testify and that her accusatory hearsay statements would be admitted into evidence. The district court then issued an order entitled Order Concerning Competency of Certain Minor Children in which it considered the truthfulness of the children's statements as well as the children's competence to testify. The court found Susan competent to testify, even though she was very young when she attended the day care center. The court then made a blanket ruling as to the trustworthiness of Susan's hearsay statements: [T]his Court cannot say that the child's recollections have been contaminated by intervening interviews with parents, therapists or police officers. Assertions of suggestive questioning and coaching brought by the Defense expert, Dr. Lee Coleman, are not clearly established by the record. The testimony of the child concerning unusual occurrences at the FELIX residence will be admitted. The extent to which such testimony is childhood fantasy, a product of the child's fear and terror, the result of uncritical interviewing or founded in reality are matters going to the weight, not the admissibility, of the evidence. The district court also found that Patricia was competent to testify and that her testimony was not made inherently unreliable by the suggestive interviewing techniques. I find that Patricia was legally competent at the time of the alleged events, at the time of disclosure, and that the interviewing methodology was not, as a matter of law, so suggestive or coached as to make her statements inherently unreliable. Whether she is available and able to testify or perhaps made incompetent now because of mental problems, will have to be determined at the appropriate place in trial. The appellants made continuing objections to the receipt of the children's hearsay statements pursuant to NRS 51.385, the court accepted such objections, and the State admits this fact on appeal.