§ 22.14 TESTIMONY ON CREDIBILITY

• Jurisdiction: United States

§ 22.14. TESTIMONY ON CREDIBILITY

Many courts prohibit questions about whether another witness is lying.²⁰¹ These questions are considered improper for several reasons: "Credibility determinations are the province of the jury . . . Moreover, questions of this sort posit a false binary choice — either the other witness 'lied' or he should be believed — when, as any prosecutor knows (or should know), there may be multiple reasons short of perjury why a police officer's testimony in a given case may be questioned. Further, as appellant points out in his brief, since many of those reasons — such as obstructed vision or faulty memory — may be well beyond the defendant's knowledge or ability to assess, the questioning generally is not intended to seek information at all but instead to score rhetorical points."²⁰²

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Notes:

^[201] E.g., United. States v. Schmitz, 634 F.3d 1247, 1268 (11th Cir. 2011) ("[I]t is improper to ask a testifying defendant whether another witness is lying."); State v. Elnicki, 105 P.3d 1222, 1228 (Kan. 2005) ("such evidence must be disallowed as a matter of law"; videotaped interview of defendant by police who accused him of lying); Daniel v. State, 78 P.3d 890, 904 (Nev. 2003) ("We adopt a rule prohibiting prosecutors from asking a defendant whether other witnesses have lied or from goading a defendant to accuse other witnesses of lying, except where the defendant during direct examination has directly challenged the truthfulness of those witnesses.").

^[202] United States v. Harris, 471 F.2d 507, 511 (3d Cir. 2006) ("In addition, as Harris' counsel explained during oral argument, such questions force defendants into choosing to either undermine their own testimony or essentially accuse another...