Court Opinion

ID: 9630431
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 10:10:55.490108+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:07:38.328736
License: Public Domain

DURHAM, Justice,
concurring in the result.
I concur only in the result in this case and not in the majority opinion because I believe it blurs “important conceptual distinctions between inadmissible opinion on credibility and other expert opinion which only indirectly reflects on credibility and is not inadmissible on that ground.” State v. Rimmasch, 775 P.2d 388, 408 (Utah 1989) (Durham, J., concurring).
My separate opinion in Rimmasch sets forth my concerns at length, and I will not repeat them here. The confusion I am worried about comes from such language in the majority opinion as “The State did not qualify [the witness] as an expert on discerning truth; yet [the witness’s] opinion that the victim had been sexually abused was based, in part, on her interviews with the victim_” Maj. op. at 1129.
A witness need not, and indeed presumably could not, be qualified as an “expert on discerning truth” in order to give an admissible expert opinion that a child has been sexually abused. Foundation must be laid, of course, and my Rimmasch opinion describes a number of factors which might constitute adequate foundation. The majority opinion in this case characterizes the witness’s statement that the child could not have “been making this up” as an “appraisal of veracity.” I agree that there was inadequate foundation here, but emphasize that an expert opinion on the experiential, developmental, and imaginative potential of children of a certain age and background might well be within the proper purview of a child psychological expert in an appropriate case. The fact that an opinion on the capacity of a certain child to “make up” evidence of sexual abuse indirectly relates to the child’s veracity would not, in that case, render it inadmissible.