Z.P. v. State

PARKER, Acting Chief Judge.

Z.P. appeals the trial court’s finding that he was delinquent in committing the offense of grand theft. We reverse for the failure of the trial court to determine the competency of a nine-year-old witness when the witness’s competency was at issue before the trial court.1

The state’s eyewitness to the crime was a nine-year-old child. At the beginning of his testimony, the prosecutor elicited his age and that he attended third grade at a certain school. When the prosecutor began to inquire about the facts of this case, defense counsel objected, arguing that it had not…