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A DEFENSE WITNESS WHO WOULD HAVE TESTIFIED THAT A KEY PROSECUTION WITNESS HAD A POOR REPUTATION FOR TRUTHFULNESS AND VERACTIY SHOULD NOT HAVE BEEN PROHIBITED FROM TESTIFYING; CONVICTION REVERSED (SECOND DEPT).

The Second Department, reversing defendant’s conviction, determined the witness who would have testified that the complainant’s mother, a prosecution witness, had a poor reputation for truthfulness and veracity should not have been prohibited from testifying:

… [T]he defendant sought to introduce testimony from Marie Anisca-Oral, a friend of his older sister, on the subject of the reputation for truthfulness and veracity of the eight-year-old complainant’s mother (hereinafter the mother), who testified for the prosecution. In order to lay the foundation for such testimony, Anisca-Oral, a staff sergeant in the United States Army, described a community of seven or eight friends and acquaintances, predominantly of Haitian nationality, and predominantly living within certain neighborhoods in Brooklyn. Anisca-Oral testified that she had known the mother since 1999, that almost everyone she knew also knew the mother, and that every time she saw her acquaintances among this group, the mother’s reputation for truthfulness and veracity was discussed. “[T]he presentation of reputation evidence by a criminal defendant is a matter of right, not discretion, once a proper foundation has been laid”… . “A reputation may grow wherever an individual’s associations are of such quantity and quality as to permit him to be personally observed by a sufficient number of individuals to give reasonable assurance of reliability” … . “The trial court must allow such testimony, once a foundation has been laid, so long as it is relevant to contradict the testimony of a key witness and is limited to general reputation for truth and veracity in the community; the weight given to such evidence should be left in the hands of the jury” … . People v Lisene, 2022 NY Slip Op 00194, Second Dept 1-12-22

 

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