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State v. Alberico9/26/1991
as consistent with her having suffered sexual abuse or rape, and PTSD is the most common diagnosis of victims of sexual assault. She did not testify that the complainant suffered from RTS. Nor did she express an opinion that complainant was raped. Nevertheless, Dr. Lenssen's conclusions were inadmissible. The purpose of her testimony was to inform the jury that it could infer from the diagnosis that the complainant had suffered a severe trauma -- rape.
The prosecutor stated that Dr. Lenssen "will describe the damage to the victim to tell us whether a crime has been committed." Of course, in one sense any evidence proffered by the state in a prosecution is for the purpose of showing that a crime was committed. For example, when the prosecutor impeaches the credibility of a defense witness through proof of a prior felony conviction, the purpose is to cause the jury to disbelieve that witness and thereby strengthen the credibility of state witnesses, from whose testimony the jury is to infer that the crime was committed. What the prosecutor undoubtedly meant here, however, was that her purpose was that the jury infer from Dr. Lenssen's diagnosis that a sexual assault had occurred.
As noted by the dissent, defense counsel's cross-examination of Dr. Lenssen reinforced this inference; but even absent that cross-examination, Dr. Lenssen's testimony could serve no other plausible purpose. The prosecutor explicitly stated that she was not seeking to prove mental anguish to satisfy the "personal injury " element of the offense. Nor was she attempting to rehabilitate the complainant by showing that her conduct was consistent with there having been a rape; the complainant made the accusation promptly after the incident.
The prosecutor clearly intended the testimony to be viewed as follows: (1) Dr. Lenssen diagnosed complainant as having PTSD; (2) inherent in that diagnosis is the conclusion that complainant had suffered a severe trauma; (3) one such trauma is rape; (4) in the absence of evidence of other such trauma, one should conclude that complainant was raped. Essential to this train of reasoning is the premise that through testing and interviews a psychologist can make a diagnosis that can resolve whether a woman has been raped. Dr. Lenssen did not utter the final conclusion from the suggested train of reasoning -- the conclusion that complainant was raped. It was left to the jury to determine whether complainant had suffered an equivalent trauma. But failure to state the ultimate conclusion does not avoid the critical flaw in the chain of reasoning -- the premise that there is a method available to psychologists that can distinguish between the alternative versions of the incident in this case. See State v. McCoy, 366 S.E.2d at 734 (admissibility of expert testimony does not necessarily turn on whether expert uses the term RTS); People v. Bledsoe, 36 Cal.3d at 301 n. 14, 203 Cal.Rptr. at 460 n. 14, 681 P.2d at 301 n. 14 (expert testimony inadmissible even though witness never expressed conclusion that rape occurred). That premise has not been properly validated. Rule 11-702 therefore required exclusion of this line of testimony.
The dissent does not persuade us otherwise. Judge Bivins apparently believes that objections to testimony that a complainant displayed RTS can be circumvented by limiting the testimony to just an assertion that the complainant suffered from PTSD. Yet the purpose of the PTSD "diagnosis" testimony in this case was to show that the complainant had suffered a severe trauma -- a trauma that is outside the range of usual human experience and that would be markedly distressing to anyone. The question is whether a p
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