Court Opinion

ID: 9693042
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 16:17:23.829813+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:19:39.123750
License: Public Domain

*872SCHWELB, Associate Judge,
concurring:
I concur in the judgment and join the opinion of the court. I add a few observations regarding whether a remand is necessary.
Ms. Brown sought the services of an expert to support a proffered defense along the following lines:
(1) that she was physically unable to get her daughter to attend school; (2) that sending her child to school would have caused the child more psychological harm than good; and/or (3) that sending her child to school would have been academically useless because when the child would go she would refuse to participate in class.
(Numerals added.) Ms. Brown testified, however, that she attempted to walk Laida to school every day — an account rejected by the trial judge. Her testimony was not that taking Laida to school would have harmed the child (as in point 2 of her proffer) or that doing so would have been “academically useless” (as in point 3 of her proffer). On the contrary, Ms. Brown insisted that she very much wanted her daughter to be in school and that she tried hard to bring her there, but that the child ran away every day. If Ms. Brown had testified that her reason for not taking Laida to school was that school harmed Laida in some way, then we would have an entirely different case.
Point 1 of the defense proffer, on the other hand, would tend to corroborate Ms. Brown’s testimony that Laida consistently refused to attend school and thwarted Ms. Brown’s efforts to take her there. The proposed expert evidence could have revealed traumatic events in Lakia’s life and might have reinforced Ms. Brown’s testimony regarding the intensity of Lakia’s resistance to going to school.1
Under all of the circumstances, I am not prepared to dispute the court’s conclusion that a remand is necessary to determine if the trial court’s error in refusing to authorize the services of an expert psychologist was harmless. In my opinion, however, it is a very close call. Arguably, we could properly conclude on the present record, and without a remand, that Ms. Brown was not substantially prejudiced by the trial court’s refusal to approve her request for the services of an expert.

. It is worth noting, though, that according to the testimony, Lakia attended school regularly when her grandmother or father took her.