State v. Wetherbee

The principal issue in this appeal from a conviction for lewd or lascivious conduct with a child, 13 V.S.A. § 2602, is whether an examining psychologist’s testimony about the child’s account of how the crime happened, and who did it, was harmless error. The testimony was an impermissible expert opinion that the child-victim was believable. The error was sufficiently prejudicial to require reversal of the conviction, and accordingly we remand for a new trial.

I

Defendant was alleged to have fondled the genitals of his then three-year-old daughter while she was visiting him after her parents’…