Utah Court of Appeals hears challenge to expert testimony and creditability evidence in State v. Francis

Good morning everyone. Welcome to the Utah Court of Appeals. I'm Judge Ryan Tenney. I will be chairing today's panel. Pleased to be joined by Judges Harris and Mortensen.

Natalie Scabine, counsel for the defendant in State v. Francis, told the three‑judge panel she was asking the court to exclude portions of an expert's testimony about delayed reporting in sexual‑assault cases and to distinguish the court's prior decisions. Scabine said the expert "did not tease out where his statistics or his testimony was coming from all the time," and that testimony mixed research, clinical experience and anecdote in a way she said was unreliable and unfairly prejudicial.

Scabine told the court three parts of the expert's testimony were most prejudicial: that most sexual assaults are perpetrated by someone the victim knows; that victims tend to blame themselves leading to delayed reporting; and testimony that, in the expert's view, about two‑thirds of delayed reports happen after an initial period. "That statistic was presented as…