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Case 1:20-cr-00330-PAE Document 499 _ Filed 11/23/21 Page 20 of 28
question—are the accusers in this case telling the truth? The government obviously thinks they
are. And that’s fine. But it will be up to the jury to decide.
On the other hand, if the alleged “victims of sexual assaults . . . [were not] involved an
ongoing relationship of attachment and coercion with their abusers”—that is, if the victims are
not telling the truth—then according to the government Dr. Dietz’s opinions are unreliable. In
either scenario, says the government, Dr. Dietz can’t testify. As explained above, and as the
government concedes when it admits that Dr. Dietz can testify about his disagreement with Dr.
Rocchio’s definition of “grooming,” there is ample room for debate about what constitutes
grooming behavior and how it manifests.
Accordingly, this Court should reject this “heads the government wins, tails Ms. Maxwell
loses” argument.
II. Dr. Loftus’s Testimony is Admissible.
The government goes to great lengths to present cases where memory testimony was
precluded. Excepting one civil negligence claim based on exposure to sexual abuse, the cases
cited by the government almost exclusively focus on reliability of eyewitness testimony or failed
memory regarding specific time or documents. The simplicity of the issues in the cited cases
were deemed by the court not to require expert testimony. None of these cases involved the
government proffering its own expert to testify about why an accuser or witness might not
remember things or remember them inconsistently. Moreover, the cases recognize that, in
circumstances like those present in this case, even absent a government “trauma/memory”
witness, defense expert testimony is appropriate. See, e.g., United States v. Heine, No. 3:15-CR-
00238-SI-2, 2017 WL 5260784, at *2 (D. Or. Nov. 13, 2017) (expert testimony regarding
memory would be allowed if the case involved issues of suggestive questioning, drug use,
hallucinations, or repressed or recovered memories).
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Document Details
| Filename | DOJ-OGR-00007485.jpg |
| File Size | 702.9 KB |
| OCR Confidence | 94.3% |
| Has Readable Text | Yes |
| Text Length | 2,048 characters |
| Indexed | 2026-02-03 17:23:52.863123 |