Court Opinion

ID: 9630325
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 10:08:29.590751+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:07:36.531846
License: Public Domain

Gibson, J.,
dissenting. I am unable to agree with the majority opinion. It ignores our plain-error precedents, and despite the majority’s rhetoric, the record presents no obvious error that affects defendant’s substantial rights. The opinion is also troubling because it not only departs from precedent but it provides no new guidelines for the trial courts in future cases. I therefore dissent.
The majority takes exception to the expert testimony presented in this case. The expert played two important roles herein. First, he provided a detailed account of the child’s communications about the abuse as the first person to whom the child disclosed that she had been sexually abused. He explained his interviewing technique and then repeated the child’s disclosures to the jury. He also provided details about the abuse that the child was unable to verbalize but that she had been able *405to demonstrate with dolls. This testimony corroborated the child’s allegations, thus fulfilling a major purpose of V.R.E. 804a. See Reporter’s Notes, V.R.E. 804a (legislative intent to cure frequent problem of lack of corroboration caused by traditional hearsay rules).
The expert’s second role was to rebut defendant’s attack on the child’s credibility. At trial, the child was cross-examined by defense counsel about having recanted her allegations during a deposition. The expert, as the State’s last witness, testified that delayed reporting of sexual abuse and recantation are not unusual phenomena. Such testimony is admissible and is useful to assist the jury in assessing the complainant’s credibility. State v. Gokey, 154 Vt. 129, 133-36, 574 A.2d 766, 768 (1990). The expert also explained that consistent and detailed allegations of abuse are not likely to have been fabricated. His testimony provided specialized knowledge designed to help the jury assess the evidence — a proper purpose of expert testimony. V.R.E. 702; see State v. Catsam, 148 Vt. 366, 371, 534 A.2d 184, 188 (1987) (expert testimony on truthfulness of child sexual abuse victim not admissible unless it will assist jury to understand the evidence).
Defendant argues that the expert testimony exceeded the permissible limits of these two roles, but he did not raise this objection at trial. Review is therefore limited to plain error. State v. Sims, 158 Vt. 173, 181, 608 A.2d 1149, 1154 (1991). Under the plain-error standard, reversal is warranted only if the error is obvious and affects substantial rights of the defendant. Id. As the majority notes, an error is obvious if it is one that the trial court should easily recognize. 160 Vt. at 400, 628 A.2d at 1266. The majority finds that two errors were obvious: (1) the expert’s testimony on the victim’s credibility, and (2) the expert’s testimony on the identity of the perpetrator. I find neither “error” so obvious that the trial court should - have recognized it sua sponte, or so egregious that we should reverse.
The expert testimony on the child’s credibility does not warrant reversal because there was no obvious error. The majority admits that this testimony “cannot be easily summarized,” explaining that “[i]t did not take the form of one or two isolated statements; rather, it followed the path of [the expert’s] own *406reliance on the child’s word — how he came to believe her to the point that he reported abuse to SRS.” Id. at 398, 628 A.2d at 1264-65. At what point the testimony became obvious error is not stated in the majority opinion. Of course, “[hindsight always offers a more complete assessment of error and its impact,” State v. McCarthy, 156 Vt. 148, 159, 589 A.2d 869, 876 (1991) (Morse, J., dissenting), but the test on appeal is whether the trial court should easily have recognized the error at the time. I do not see how the trial court could have easily recognized the “path” of the expert here. The error, if any, was not obvious. Further, had the testimony been so obviously out of line as the majority would have us believe, it would have prompted an objection or a motion to strike by defendant’s experienced defense counsel. Neither action was taken. “Yet, this Court today holds in hindsight that the trial court sua sponte should have stopped the State in its tracks.” Id. at 159, 589 A.2d at 875-76 (Morse, J., dissenting).
Expert testimony implying that a child complainant is credible is not error per se. Clearly, the State calls an expert to testify in support of its case. See State v. Wetherbee, 156 Vt. 425, 434, 594 A.2d 390, 395 (1991) (“If the diagnosing expert’s examination shed any doubt on the child’s credibility, it would be unnatural and uncharacteristic for the expert to testify for the prosecution.”). To this extent, the testimony of the expert ordinarily implies that the complainant is' telling the truth. It is improper, of course, for an expert to testify directly to the truthfulness of thé complainant. Catsam, 148 Vt. at 371, 534 A.2d at 188. Even testimony that is “tantamount to a direct comment that the complainant was telling the truth about the alleged sexual assault” is impermissible. Id. at 370, 534 A.2d at 187. Here, there was no such direct testimony, however.
The majority describes the expert’s testimony as “articulate and expansive” in contrast to the “sparseness” of the child’s testimony. 160 Vt. at 401, 628 A.2d at 1266. The difference should not be unexpected. The child was six years old and testifying to a matter that was sensitive and embarrassing in a courtroom setting that was unfamiliar. In his testimony, the expert properly described the procedures he followed in examining the child. Nowhere does he “vouch[] for the victim’s credibility” or “stake[] his professional reputation on it.” Id. at *407401, 628 A.2d at 1266. The majority can point to no testimony that goes this far.
According to the majority, the error should have been obvious to the trial court because we have condemned this type of expert testimony in Catsam, Gokey, and Wetherbee. In Catsam, we held that expert testimony that children suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder do not fabricate stories about sexual abuse was not admissible under V.R.E. 702. 148 Vt. at 370-71, 534 A.2d at 188. Because the expert also testified that the complainant had post-traumatic stress disorder, this statement was “tantamount to a direct comment” that the complainant did not fabricate the sexual abuse charges. Id. at 370, 534 A.2d at 187. There is no comparable testimony in the instant case. The expert here testified that detailed and consistent statements given by a child are not likely to have been fabricated. This “specialized knowledge,” V.R.E. 702, helped the jury to better understand the child’s testimony and evaluate her credibility by examining the consistency of the statements she made to the expert and to the SRS worker. Unlike diagnosing a psychological disorder, the jury is able to evaluate whether statements are consistent without expert opinion.
In Gokey, we held that expert testimony repeating the child’s statement that the defendant had abused her was improperly admitted under V.R.E. 702, 703 or 705. 154 Vt. at 139-40, 574 A.2d at 771-72. We reached this decision because we concluded that testimony about the child’s hearsay statement was not profile evidence, admissible under V.R.E. 702, nor the basis of the expert’s opinion that the child exhibited symptoms common to sexually abused children, admissible under V.R.E. 703 or 705. Id. at 138-40, 574 A.2d at 770-72. Likewise, in Wetherbee, 156 Vt. at 430, 437, 594 A.2d at 392-93, 396, we held that it was impermissible under V.R.E. 702 to allow a psychologist to repeat the victim’s statement that the defendant was the abuser, that such testimony went beyond the limits set forth in Gokey, and that this error was not harmless.
Neither the rule nor the rationale of Gokey is applicable here because the child’s hearsay statements were not admitted as profile evidence or as the basis of the expert’s opinion. They were admitted as substantive evidence under V.R.E. 804a to corroborate the child’s complaint. This. Court has never held *408that a witness may not testify to a child’s hearsay statements identifying the perpetrator under V.R.E. 804a. See, e.g., State v. Gallagher, 150 Vt. 341, 349, 554 A.2d 221, 226 (1988) (statements of “cause,” such as child’s identification of abuser, “are more properly admitted under Rule 804a, which requires specific findings of ‘trustworthiness’”).
In the instant case, the expert never testified that he believed defendant was the perpetrator; rather, he testified that the child had told him defendant was the perpetrator. The trial court concluded that these statements were admissible under V.R.E. 804a. The court conducted preliminary hearings prior to receiving testimony about the child’s statements, and it made extensive findings, as required by V.R.E. 804a. Its findings are supported by the evidence.
Moreover, defendant’s substantial rights were not affected by the V.R.E. 804a hearsay statements identifying him as the abuser or the expert’s statement indicating that he had resolved in his mind that the abuser was not the child’s stepfather. There was no issue regarding identity in this case. The child identified defendant as the perpetrator at trial. Two witnesses testified that all of the child’s symptoms emerged before and after visitation with defendant. The child was taken to the expert to find out why she resisted visitation with defendant, and she revealed to the expert that defendant had sexually abused her.
Defendant never suggested that the child may have been abused by another person. Rather, he sought to convince the jury that the child’s mother had fabricated the allegations to prevent his visitation with the child. The expert’s opinion that the stepfather had not sexually abused the child was therefore consistent with the theory advanced by the defense that no abuse had ever occurred. Indeed, any allegations of abuse by another person would have diminished defendant’s argument that the stories were fabricated to prevent his contact with the child. “We do not know defendant’s strategy in this case, and his lack of objection may have been an intentional trial tactic.” McCarthy, 156 Vt. at 159, 589 A.2d at 876 (Morse, J., dissenting).
Our law thus does not require a reversal in this case based on any statement by the expert identifying defendant as the per*409petrator. V.R.E. 804a was designed to provide a mechanism by which out-of-court statements of a child ten years of age or younger could be placed in evidence. By its action today, the majority has effectively eviscerated this rule.
The majority also departs today from a long line of plain-error precedent on the issue of expert testimony in child sexual abuse cases. “This Court has never found an expert’s impermissible comment on a child sexual abuse complainant’s credibility to be plain error.” Sims, 158 Vt. at 181-82, 608 A.2d at 1154. In Sims, we compared the expert testimony at issue to the expert testimony in other plain-error cases and concluded that there was no plain error.
When the substance of the testimony in this case is compared with that in the foregoing cases, it is difficult to conclude that plain error was committed here. In [State v.] DeJoinville, no plain error was found despite the fact that the expert expressly testified about the credibility of child sexual abuse complainants. 145 Vt. [603,] 604, 496 A.2d [173,] 174 [(1985)]. In [State v] Recor, the expert stated that the consistency of a child’s statements “gives me a sense that what they are saying happened, happened.” 150 Vt. [40,] 45, 549 A.2d [1382,] 1386 [(1988)]. In [State v] Ross, the expert not only detailed the complainant’s sexual activity with the defendant as told to her by the complainant, and not only stated that young children do not fabricate stories of sexual abuse, but also expressly concluded that the complainant had been sexually abused by the defendant. 152 Vt. [462,] 467-68, 568 A.2d [335,] 339 [(1989)].
Id. at 182, 608 A.2d at 1154. The expert testimony in the instant case is less egregious than that in Sims, Ross, Recor, or De-Joinville.
Even if error were obvious here because similar testimony has “been condemned in case after case,” 160 Vt. at 400, 628 A.2d at 1266, the error did not affect defendant’s substantial rights. In case after case, we have found that similar testimony did not affect the rights of the defendants in those cases. Conducting a Sims comparison here can only lead to the conclusion that the expert testimony does not amount to plain error. Cf. 158 Vt. at 182, 608 A.2d at 1154. The majority ignores this *410precedent, as it downplays the corroborating testimony of the grandmother, police officer, and social worker, and the graphic description by the mother of the child’s increasing symptoms of distress at her impending visits with defendant.
My final difficulty with the majority’s decision lies in its impact on future trials. The effect of the combination of discarding our established precedents and failing to set forth guidelines for the introduction of evidence under V.R.E. 804a will inevitably leave the courts in a state of perplexity. The courts can no longer look to our previous cases to determine what is or is not admissible or what may constitute an error so grave that they must act sua sponte. Rather, the majority creates a vague “hindsight” test, frustrating the notion that plain error should be plain in the first instance.
I respectfully dissent. I am authorized to state that Chief Justice Allen joins in this dissent.