Credibility: Child Molestation
April 17th, 2015

 

People v. Fernandez ( 2013) 216 Cal. App. 4th 540, upheld CC 330 over a challenge that the instruction unfairly bolstered a child molestation victim’s credibility and impaired the defense’s ability to impeach her credibility based on her inability to perceive, understand, remember, and communicate. Relying on cases that had upheld CJ 2.20.1, the Court of Appeal held that CC 330 “simply instructs the jury to take into account a child’s ability to perceive, understand, remember, and communicate when making a credibility determination. It does not instruct the jury to subject a child’s testimony to a less rigorous credibility.” (Ibid.)


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