Vaidik, J.
Robert A. Neace appeals his conviction for Level 4 felony child molesting, arguing that the trial court erred in allowing vouching testimony. The State argues that the vouching testimony was admissible because Neace opened the door to it during voir dire by asking prospective jurors if they would automatically believe a child and offering a general response to a prospective juror’s spontaneous statement about children being coached to lie. But these remarks, without more, are not enough to open the door to otherwise inadmissible vouching testimony. And because the trial court’s admission of the vouching testimony was not harmless error, we reverse Neace’s conviction and remand for a new trial. In doing so, we caution both trial courts and the State against unwarranted use of vouching testimony in child-molesting cases.
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Neace contends that Blakey and Nurse Callahan impermissibly vouched for E.H.’s credibility. Vouching testimony is prohibited by Indiana Evidence Rule 704(b), which provides that “[w]itnesses may not testify to opinions concerning intent, guilt, or innocence in a criminal case; the truth or falsity of allegations; whether a witness has testified truthfully; or legal conclusions.” Such testimony invades the province of the jury in determining what weight to give a witness’s testimony. Gutierrez v. State, 961 N.E.2d 1030, 1034 (Ind. Ct. App. 2012). This is especially so in child sexual-abuse cases, which “often rely on the uncorroborated testimony of the victim, meaning the State’s entire case hinges on the victim’s credibility.” Henson v. State, 237 N.E.3d 1160, 1167 (Ind. Ct. App. 2024), trans. denied.
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The State claims that Neace opened the door to Blakey’s and Nurse Callahan’s vouching testimony during voir dire. It first points to defense counsel’s questions about “wanting to believe a child versus protecting the rights of a person that was accused” and thinking “if this child said it’s true, it must be true.” Appellee’s Br. p. 10. But simply raising the issue of whether to believe a child does not open the door to otherwise inadmissible vouching testimony. As noted above, many child sexual-abuse cases rely on the victim’s uncorroborated testimony, and whether to believe the victim is almost always at issue in these cases. Asking prospective jurors if they would automatically believe a child doesn’t leave them with a false or misleading impression of the facts or warrant an explanation or rebuttal from the State. See Hayko v. State, 211 N.E.3d 483, 487 n.2 (Ind. 2023) (“[D]uring voir dire, . . . the State’s questions were properly aimed at discerning whether a prospective juror had any opinion, belief, or bias about children and their credibility, or whether they had any experiences that would impact their ability to evaluate a child’s testimony concerning allegations of molestation.”), reh’g denied. Defense counsel’s questions during voir dire didn’t open the door to Blakey’s and Nurse Callahan’s vouching testimony. See Sundling, 679 N.E.2d at 993 (rejecting State’s claim that defendant opened the door during voir dire to evidence of other bad acts where defendant “merely pointed out that the testimony of young children could be manipulated by parents, police and therapists” but “did not place the contention that the victims were fantasizing about their molestations in issue”).
The State also argues that Neace opened the door when he “injected the possibility of children being dishonest and being coached” while questioning prospective jurors. Appellee’s Br. p. 10. It is true that a court may permit “testimony about the signs of coaching and whether a child exhibited such signs or has or has not been coached, provided the defendant has opened the door to such testimony.” Sampson, 38 N.E.3d at 992. But we disagree with the State that Neace “injected” the issue of coaching. Although defense counsel referenced coaching to the first group of prospective jurors, he did so only after a prospective juror stated that “children can be manipulated” and “influenced . . . to say certain things.” Defense counsel responded, “[Prospective Juror] 1435, going back to what you said, that children can be coached to say, say this happened . . . .” Counsel then moved on to another line of questioning and didn’t raise the issue of coaching to any other group of prospective jurors. This isolated remark by the defense—which most of the jurors never even heard— didn’t leave the first group of prospective jurors with a false or misleading impression of the facts.
Importantly, Neace didn’t claim in his opening statement that E.H. had been coached or ask any questions about coaching when cross-examining witnesses during the State’s case-in-chief. See Sundling, 679 N.E.2d at 993 (after finding that the defendant didn’t raise during voir dire the issue of “[w]hether the children fantasized their molestation,” noting that he also “never presented any specific factual claim at trial that [the children] ‘fantasized’ their sexual encounters so as to allow the prosecution to rebut with evidence of prior misconduct”). Although Neace testified during his own case that “it sounds like somebody convinced E.H. to say this,” Blakey and Nurse Callahan testified well before Neace, so their vouching testimony couldn’t have been in response to Neace’s statement. And while a party may introduce otherwise inadmissible evidence when the other party opens the door to it, neither party introduced Nurse Callahan’s vouching testimony—it came in response to a juror question. If the State truly believed that Neace had opened the door to this testimony during voir dire, it presumably would have asked Nurse Callahan questions to elicit such testimony, such as whether E.H. exhibited signs of coaching during her examination. Defense counsel’s comment in response to a prospective juror’s statement about coaching, without more, didn’t open the door to Blakey’s and Nurse Callahan’s vouching testimony. See Sampson, 38 N.E.3d at 992 (finding that testimony about whether child exhibited signs of coaching was improper where it “was neither in response to defense questioning, nor to rebut an express claim that [the child] had been coached”). The trial court therefore abused its discretion in admitting this testimony.
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Blakey’s testimony that E.H. didn’t show signs of being coached and Nurse Callahan’s testimony that children tell the truth during sexual-assault examinations were effectively statements that E.H. was telling the truth. See Hoglund, 962 N.E.2d at 1238 (“[A]lthough none of the expert witnesses’ responses took the direct form of ‘I believe the child’s story,’ or ‘In my opinion the child is telling the truth,’ . . . their responses were comments on the child witness’ truthfulness.”). Given that E.H.’s account of the molestation changed at trial, and the lack of substantial independent evidence of guilt, these statements likely had a prejudicial impact on the jury and contributed to the guilty verdict. Thus, the trial court’s error in admitting these statements was not harmless. See Hamilton, 43 N.E.3d at 634 (“The only value of [the forensic interviewer’s] testimony was to improperly bolster the credibility of [the victims]. . . . [I]t is extremely difficult to imagine a scenario in which such testimony . . . is harmless in a case such as this where a conviction depends entirely upon assessing the credibility of the alleged victim.”). We therefore reverse Neace’s conviction and remand for a new trial.
Reversed and remanded.
Mathias, J., and Pyle, J., concur.