holding “If [the witness] had testified that he believed Appellant to be guilty, such would have been an opinion as to the ultimate issue. However, an opinion that a result is consistent with a factual scenario is not an opinion that the scenario occurred.”
How later courts described this case
- holding “If [the witness] had testified that he believed Appellant to be guilty, such would have been an opinion as to the ultimate issue. However, an opinion that a result is consistent with a factual scenario is not an opinion that the scenario occurred.”
- holding “[o]ur failure to adopt proposed KRE 704 simply left the ‘ultimate issue’ unaddressed in the Kentucky Rules of Evidence and, therefore, subject to common law interpretation by proper application of the rules pertaining to relevancy, KRE 401, and expert testimony, KRE 702.”
- reiterating generally, a witness may not vouch for the truthfulness of another witness, and holding that a certified psychological counselor and cognitive therapist found the victim's responses to be "consistent" and supported by "internal logic," and that such alleviated his initial concerns that the child had been . "coached" was not palpable error
- noting that “[t]he real question should not be whether the expert has rendered an opinion as to the ultimate issue, but whether the opinion ‘will assist the trier of fact to understand the evidence or to determine a fact in issue’ ”
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
STEPHENS, Chief Justice,
concurring.
Recognizing the law of the Commonwealth, I concur in the result reached by the majority. However, I renew my constitutional objection to KRS 421.350, as stated in my dissent in Commonwealth v. Willis, Ky., 716 S.W.2d 224, 234 (1986).