in which the court held that a lay witness may testify in the form of an opinion only if the testimony is helpful to a clear understanding of the witness’s testimony or the determination of a fact in issue; noting that like the admission of expert opinion testimony, the matter is left to the trial court’s discretion
How later courts described this case
- in which the court held that a lay witness may testify in the form of an opinion only if the testimony is helpful to a clear understanding of the witness’s testimony or the determination of a fact in issue; noting that like the admission of expert opinion testimony, the matter is left to the trial court’s discretion
- “Although the comments were improper, we do not believe they deprived defendant of a fair trial so as to invoke the plain error doctrine. The comments were not involved or likely to mislead the jury, nor did the trial court compound the error by giving an improper instruction”
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
JUSTICE GREEN, specially concurring:
I concur in the decision to affirm and agree that no reversible error resulted from the admission of the testimony of Detective Fitch. However, I would analyze the issue slightly differently than does the majority.
To the extent Fitch’s answer “I find that that’s the norm” meant that on many occasions alleged sexual abuse victims had denied abuse on a first interview with him, the answer was a statement of fact as to what he had heard. Any witness is competent to give such an answer. To the extent that the answer indicated that more often than not this happens when he interviewed such people, the answer would either still be one of fact or, at the most, the opinion which a lay person could give. He would be drawing an inference from his memory that more often than not it happened.
On the other hand, the definition of the word “norm” most nearly descriptive of the phenomena described here is “AVERAGE: as *** [to] a pattern or trait taken to be typical in the behavior of a social group.” (Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary 806 (1990).) If Fitch’s answer be taken as a statement that from his experience as an investigator he had learned that those in the field have found that such alleged victims are very likely to deny sexual abuse at the first interview even though the abuse occurred, the answer was an opinion which can only be given by an expert because the opinion would be based upon his training and experience and would be beyond the knowledge of the average person. People v. Free (1983), 94 Ill. 2d 378, 411 , 447 N.E.2d 218, 234 .
The making of a proper objection is usually necessary to preserve error in the admission of evidence. (Casson v. Nash (1978), 74 Ill. 2d 164, 171 , 384 N.E.2d 365, 368 .) Unless the grounds for the objection are obvious, the objection must be specific. (Massey v. Farmers’ National Bank (1882), 104 Ill. 327 ; M. Graham, Cleary & Graham’s Handbook of Illinois Evidence §103.2, at 6 (5th ed. 1990).) The only objection made to the testimony involved here was that it asked the witness to generalize about other cases. No contention has been made that this testimony lacked relevance or materiality. No objection that the question would require the giving of any kind of an opinion was made.
If an objection had been made that the question called for an expert opinion and no foundation had been laid, the prosecutor could have proceeded to lay a foundation for the giving of such an opinion. In any event, some foundation was laid in that Fitch testified as to his experience in handling cases of this nature. Any error in the admission of the testimony did not amount to plain error which would not have been waived by lack of a proper objection.