Court Opinion

ID: 9761022
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 01:28:43.578608+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:29:19.722801
License: Public Domain

LEIBSON, Justice,
dissenting.
Respectfully, I dissent.
The Majority Opinion has overruled Commonwealth v. Rose, Ky., 725 S.W.2d 588 (1987), and embarked upon an uncharted sea. This Opinion erodes safeguards in the law on the use of expert testimony that protect against the use of unqualified opinions as evidence. It will have adverse effect in future cases for both sides, the Commonwealth and the criminally accused.
Our Court orders that on remand Ms. Alexander, Director of the YWCA Spouse Abuse Center, shall be permitted to “include her opinion of whether Ramona Craig was suffering from that [“battered wife”] syndrome at the time of the shooting of George Craig.”
At trial Ms. Alexander was permitted as an expert, as a social worker and counsel- or, to explain the usual characteristics and consequences of the battered wife syndrome. The problem is that she was not qualified to opine on the mental state of the accused at the time she pulled the trigger, but the Majority sanctions the use of her unqualified opinion.
Ms. Alexander was followed to the stand by the appellant who gave vivid and dramatic testimony of the continuing abuse she suffered during her turbulent marriage. The combined testimony from Ms. Alexander and the appellant fully explained the battered woman syndrome to the jury and then permitted the jury to identify the appellant as a person suffering from the syndrome at the time she shot her husband. Ms. Alexander was no more qualified than was the jury, by either her training as a social worker or by experience, to state her conclusion regarding the accused’s state of mind at the time she pulled the trigger. She was well qualified to give the profile of a battered wife, but that is the extent of her expertise. Expert opinion evidence presupposes the witness is more qualified and better suited than the jury to draw the inference as to the fact at issue. The issue was the accused’s mental state at the time she pulled the trigger and the Majority Opinion concedes the “expert” has *390no special knowledge or training in determining an individual’s mental condition.
The Majority Opinion states:
“Rose now stands for two erroneous maxims — one, that the battered wife syndrome is a mental condition and, two, that only a psychiatrist or a clinical psychologist can testify as an expert.”
This is wrong for on both scores: (1) it is not the Rose opinion but the essential nature of the testimony that qualifies the battered wife syndrome as descriptive of a “mental condition”; and (2) Rose does not say who “can testify as an expert,” but only that anyone seeking to do so must be qualified.
If the battered wife (or spouse abuse) syndrome is not an explanation of the accused’s “mental condition” offered to prove she believed she was acting in self-defense, what else is it and why is it relevant in this case? The Majority Opinion confuses “mental condition” with “medical in nature.” A mental condition need not be a diseased or abnormal mental condition before we should require that the witness be skilled in diagnosing a mental condition before testifying about it. On the contrary, whether the accused’s mental state represents normal or abnormal psychology is beside the point; the point being whether it equates with the mental state appropriate for a finding that the accused believed she was acting in self-defense.
Rose does not hold that “only a psychiatrist or a clinical psychologist can testify as an expert,” as the Majority opines. All Rose holds is that these are persons who are experts in diagnosing an individual’s “mental condition” whereas social workers are not.
Ms. Alexander was well qualified to counsel and assist women who had been battered by their husbands. Some of these women had been so affected by their experiences that they would have believed it necessary to shoot their husband in self-defense, and some would not. Ms. Alexander was simply unqualified to give expert opinion that Ramona Craig was under the influence of the battered wife syndrome and felt compelled to shoot her husband at the moment she pulled the trigger.
The evidence in the record is that the battered wife syndrome is a pattern of characteristics that has no specific medical significance. If this is so, it is profile testimony and nothing more. We should not permit use of testimony, either to acquit or convict, to the effect that a person fits a profile, whether it be the profile of a drug courier, a battered wife spouse, or a sexually abused child. It is uncontradicted that many persons exhibit characteristics fitting such patterns even though they would not be diagnosed as possessing such mental conditions.
In this case the trial court found that the social worker lacked the “necessary professional education and experience to enable [her] to testify as to the mental condition of the defendant or to diagnose a mental condition of ‘battered wife’ syndrome.” The record supports this. The trial court’s finding should not be set aside.
The trial judge applied Rose precisely as written. Rose should be followed and the conviction should be affirmed.
STEPHENS, C.J., joins this dissent.