DOJ-OGR-00005984.jpg

Case 1:20-cr-00330-PAE Document398 _ Filed 10/29/21 Page 29 of 52 along these lines, that will open the door to other sexual behavior evidence. That door can remain at least partially closed if Rocchio is not permitted to offer her irrelevant and unfairly prejudicial testimony. e The government still hasn’t explained how it helps the jury to be told that a victim of sexual abuse might make an immediate disclosure, or she might make an incremental disclosure, or she might make a delayed disclosure. Resp. at 27-30. And when the government says, “[s]exual abuse also impacts the way memory is encoded,” that opinion is far outside Rocchio’s expertise because the parties agree that she is not an expert in “the human brain or memory generally.” Resp. at 30 n.7. C. Ata minimum, this Court should hold a Daubert hearing. There is ample reason for this Court to exclude Rocchio’s testimony outright. At the very least, Ms. Maxwell is entitled to a Daubert hearing. The government implicitly concedes as much. In a footnote, the government acknowledges the decision in United States v. Raniere, in which Judge Garaufis ordered a Daubert hearing on the government’s proposed expert testimony on grooming. 2019 WL 2212639, at *7-8. In that case, however, the government withdrew its endorsement rather than submit to an Daubert hearing. Resp. at 19 n.3. Judge Garaufis reasoned that even if other courts in other cases had admitted testimony about grooming, “that [did] not make Dr. Hughes’s opinion about grooming techniques reliable under the Daubert standard,” if only because “her extensive academic and clinical experience appears focused on victims of sexual abuse, not perpetrators.” See id. at *7. The same is true here, particularly because Rocchio has no experience in, and there is no authority supporting her opinions on, grooming-by-proxy. Quite the contrary. The government’s late-breaking disclosure states: 23 DOJ-OGR- 00005984