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Case 1:20-cr-00330-PAE Document 386 Filed 10/29/21 Page 16 of 24 intent or the truthfulness of the victim’s testimony—does not satisfy the fit or reliability requirements” of Rule 702); Bennett & O’ Donohue, 23 J. Child Sexual Abuse at 974 (“[I]t appears that grooming is not a construct that ought to be used in forensic settings as it does not meet some of the criteria in the Daubert standard.”). 4. Roccio’s grooming opinions are substantially more prejudicial than probative. Rocchio’s proposed testimony is also inadmissible under Rule 403. For one thing, it will “radically simplify” an otherwise complex case. See United States v. Burns, No. 07 CR 556, 2009 WL 3617448, at *5 (N.D. IIL. Oct. 27, 2009) (criticizing the “grooming theory” in in the context of a sentencing guidelines calculation). As the Court explained in United States v. Burns, Rocchio’s “grooming theory” can “foist a damning teleology on a series of actions each of which might have been motivated by a variety of ends or no ends at all . . . radically simplifyi[ng] the mess of... competing feelings, urges, and needs over the course of [a] relationship into the neat dichotomy of victim and predator.” Jd. See Gonyer, 2012 WL 3043020, at * 3 (to describe the so-called “attributes of a sexual predator” is to “invite the jury to so label a defendant” a sexual predator). For another thing, her testimony “runs the risk of creating a false sense of expert infallibility in an area of testimony that has not been subjected to scientific scrutiny.” Gonyer, 2012 WL 3043020, at * 3 (citing Raymond, 700 F.Supp.2d at 150 (“a toxic mixture of purported expertise and common sense”)). This is particularly true given the Supreme Court’s recognition that “[e]xpert evidence can be both powerful and quite misleading because of the difficulty in evaluating it.” Daubert, 509 U.S. at 595. Were there any doubt about the reliability or relevance of Rocchio’s grooming opinions, which there isn’t, the Court should still exclude her testimony under Rule 403. 11 DOJ-OGR-00005640