Court Opinion

ID: 9707234
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 02:06:04.999514+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:22:29.465343
License: Public Domain

LARSEN, Justice,
concurring.
I concur in the result only. I would adopt the rationale set forth by the United States Court of Appeals for The Eighth Circuit, United States v. Azure, 801 F.2d 336 (8th Cir.1986), which was decided on September 17, 1986, two days before oral argument in the within case. The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals stated in that case, at 339-341, the following:
“Although several issues are raised on this appeal, we are primarily concerned with the question whether a pediatrician may give his opinion as to the truth of the story of a victim of child sexual abuse, an issue of first impression in this circuit. At trial, Dr. Robert ten Bensel was called to testify on behalf of the government. Dr. ten Bensel is a pediatrician and an expert on child abuse. Over pretrial objections by Azure, Dr. ten Bensel was allowed to testify that Wendy was believable and that he could “see no reason why she would not be telling the truth in this matter____” The trial court ruled that Dr. ten Bensel’s opinion of the believability of Wendy’s story was admissible under Fed.R. Evid. 702 as an expert opinion.
Azure argues that Dr. ten Bensel was not qualified to give an opinion on the credibility of Wendy and that the challenged testimony invaded the exclusive province of the jury to determine the credibility of witnesses. We must agree. Rule 702 allows an expert to give an opinion when *446his specialized knowledge “will assist the trier of fact to understand the evidence or to determine a fact in issue____” The decision whether to permit expert testimony ordinarily lies within the discretion of the trial court and will not be reversed absent an abuse of discretion. United States v. Rose, 731 F.2d 1337, 1345 (8th Cir.), cert. denied, [469 U.S. 931], 105 S.Ct. 326 [83 L.Ed.2d 263] (1984).
Research has not revealed any federal cases addressing this particular issue, but some circuits have addressed the question of the admissibility of expert opinion testimony on credibility in general. In United States v. Barnard, 490 F.2d 907 (9th Cir.1973), cert. denied, 416 U.S. 959 [94 S.Ct. 1976, 40 L.Ed.2d 310] (1974), the defendants offered expert psychiatric testimony that a government witness was a sociopath who would lie in testifying. In upholding the trial court’s rejection of this testimony, the court stated:
[C]ompetency is for the judge, not the jury. Credibility, however, is for the jury — the jury is the lie detector in the courtroom ... It is now suggested that psychiatrists and psychologists have more [expertise in weighing the veracity of a witness] than either judges or juries, and that their opinions can be of value to both judges and juries in determining [credibility]. Perhaps. The effect of receiving such testimony, however, may be two-fold: first, it may cause juries to surrender their own common sense in weighing testimony; second, it may produce a trial within a trial on what is a collateral but still an important matter.
Id. at 912. See also United States v. Awkard, 597 F.2d 667, 671 (9th Cir.), cert. denied, 444 U.S. 885 and 969 [100 S.Ct. 179 and 460, 62 L.Ed.2d 116 and 383] (1979). The Ninth Circuit has further held that “[u]nder the Federal Rules, opinion testimony on credibility is limited to character; all other opinions on credibility are for the jurors themselves to form.” Awkard, 597 F.2d at 671. See also United States v. Rosenberg, 108 F.Supp. 798, 806 (S.D.N.Y. 1952) (“[I]t is hornbook law that the credibility of a witness *447and the weight to be given his testimony rests exclusively with the jury.”), aff'd, 200 F.2d 666 (2d Cir.1952).
The Tenth Circuit addressed this question in United States v. Samara, 643 F.2d 701 (10th Cir.), cert. denied, 454 U.S. 829 [102 S.Ct. 662, 70 L.Ed.2d 633] (1981). In a tax evasion case, the court upheld the trial court’s rejection of an offered summary of the evidence by a defense expert, stating that “[a]n expert ‘may not go so far as to usurp the exclusive function of the jury to weigh the evidence and determine credibility.’ ” Id. at 705 (quoting United States v. Ward, 169 F.2d 460, 462 (3d Cir.1948)).
The government does not disagree with these statements of the law, but it contends that child sexual abuse cases present special circumstances where ordinary jurors need help in assessing the credibility of a child witness. See State v. Saldana, 324 N.W.2d 227, 231 (Minn.1982). The government argues that an expert with knowledge of how children, and in particular sexually abused children, think and act can aid jurors in a matter which is beyond their common knowledge and ordinary experience. Since Dr. ten Bensel has handled around one thousand child abuse cases and two hundred child sexual abuse cases, the government argues that he was qualified to give an opinion on the believability of Wendy and thereby aid the jurors in assessing her credibility.
We agree that in these types of special circumstances some expert testimony may be helpful, but putting an impressively qualifed expert’s stamp of truthfulness on a witness’ story goes too far in present circusmtances. Dr. ten Bensel might have aided the jurors without usurping their exclusive function by generally testifying about a child’s ability to separate truth from fantasy, by summarizing the medical evidence and expressing his opinion as to whether it was consistent with Wendy’s story that she was sexually abused, or perhaps by discussing various patterns of consistency in the stories of child sexual abuse victims *448and comparing those patterns with patterns in Wendy’s story. However, by going further and putting his stamp of believability on Wendy’s entire story, Dr. ten Bensel essentially told the jury that Wendy was truthful iff saying that Azure was the person who sexually abused her. No reliable test for truthfulness exists and Dr. ten Bensel was not qualified to judge the truthfulness of that part of Wendy’s story. The jury may well have relied on his opinion and “surrender[ed] their own common sense in weighing testimony. . . .” Barnard, 490 F.2d at 912.
Nor was Dr. ten Bensel’s believability opinion admissible under Fed.R.Evid. 608(a), which states:
The credibility of a witness may be ... supported by evidence in the form of opinion or reputation, but subject to these limitations: (1) the evidence may refer only to character for truthfulness or untruthfulness, and (2) evidence of truthful character is admissible only after the character of the witness for truthfulness has been attacked by opinion or reputation evidence or otherwise.
Dr. ten Bensel’s opinion evidence went beyond the limitation in Rule 608(a)(1) of only addressing character for truthfulness and addressed the specific believability and truthfulness of Wendy’s story. “[S]uch testimony is capable at times of so bolstering a witness’ testimony as artificially to increase its probative strength with the jury, and ... its admission therefore may in some situations on this basis constitute reversible error.” Homan v. United States, 279 F.2d 767, 772 (8th Cir.), cert. denied, 364 U.S. 866 [81 S.Ct. 110, 5 L.Ed.2d 88] (1960). See also United States v. Price, 722 F.2d 88, 90 (5th Cir.1983) (admission of Revenue Agent’s testimony that he relied on statements of two people in his investigation because he “believed them” constituted reversible error), cert. denied [473 U.S. 904], 105 S.Ct. 3526 [87 L.Ed.2d 651] (1985). We conclude that the trial court abused its discretion in allowing Dr. ten Bensel to give his opinion as to the believability of Wendy’s story.”