{"id":783,"date":"2012-04-04T23:59:22","date_gmt":"2012-04-04T23:59:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jlpp.org\/old_blog\/?p=783"},"modified":"2012-04-04T23:59:22","modified_gmt":"2012-04-04T23:59:22","slug":"going-to-the-dogs-part-i-the-argument-for-courthouse-therapy-dog-programs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/jlpp\/2012\/04\/04\/going-to-the-dogs-part-i-the-argument-for-courthouse-therapy-dog-programs\/","title":{"rendered":"Going to the Dogs Part I: The Argument for Courthouse Therapy Dog Programs"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Hand<\/a>
A human "holds paws" with a dog.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\nIn courthouses across the United States, dogs are taking the stand\u2014not to testify, but to serve as emotional support for testifying victims and witnesses. Courthouse therapy dogs<\/a> are professionally trained dogs that provide emotional support to people involved in the criminal justice system. Rosie, one such courthouse therapy dog, rose to national prominence in 2011 when the New York Times ran an article<\/a> detailing her role in People v. Tohom<\/em><\/a>, a criminal sexual assault case and also the first New York State case to utilize a courthouse therapy dog to help a victim testify. The victim who utilized Rosie\u2019s services as a therapy dog in this case was a 15-year-old girl; the defendant, <\/em>the victim\u2019s father, was accused of raping and impregnating his own daughter. The victim\u2019s therapist believed that the victim, who had been diagnosed with PTSD, would likely suffer \u201cvery severe emotional and mental stress\u201d while testifying in court about the trauma of her experience. With Rosie\u2019s help, however, the victim was able to testify and her father was convicted and sentenced to prison for 25 years to life. The case is currently up for appeal in the New York State court system, and, with an onslaught of recent media attention<\/a>, it has become part of the national debate about whether and to what (if any) extent service dogs should be used by courthouses.\n\nEstablished by former King County Senior Deputy Prosecutor and courthouse therapy dog pioneer Ellen O\u2019Neill-Stephens, Courthouse Dogs, LLC<\/a> identifies significant legal support for the use of therapy dogs to assist crime victims and others in the courtroom, including\u2028both statutes and case law. Federal Evidence Rule 611<\/a>, for example, tasks trial judges to \u201cexercise reasonable control over the mode and order of interrogating witnesses and presenting evidence\u201d so as to \u201cmake the interrogation and presentation effective for the ascertainment of the truth,\u201d to \u201cavoid needless consumption of time,\u201d and to \u201cprotect witnesses from harassment or undue embarrassment.\u201d Marianne Dellinger<\/a> argues that this Rule supports the use of courthouse therapy dogs because \u201cthe truth of testimony may be construed more easily from a relatively composed witness rather than from a distraught one\u201d and \u201cthe use of dogs to emotionally support witnesses may preclude time-consuming breaks otherwise needed to let upset witnesses recompose themselves.\u201d\n\nIn New York, Executive Law \u00a7 642-a<\/a> governs \u201cfair treatment of child victims as witnesses.\u201d Section four of the statute instructs the \u201cjudge presiding [to] be sensitive to the psychological and emotional stress a child witness may undergo when testifying.\u201d In People v. Gutkaiss<\/em><\/a>, the New York courts interpreted this statute to permit child victims to testify while holding teddy bears. In Gutkaiss<\/em>, an 11-year-old victim testified while holding a teddy bear and the defendant was convicted of sexual assault. Appealing his conviction, the defendant claimed that the fact that the victim held a teddy bear while he was testifying was prejudicial. The Third Department upheld the County Court\u2019s decision to allow the victim to hold the teddy bear, because the County Court had informed the jury that the teddy bear had \u201cnothing to do with the truth or falsity of [the] witness\u2019 [sic] testimony\u201d and that the jury \u201cshould [not] consider and evaluate the witness on [the] basis . . . he had a teddy bear in his possession.\u201d The Third Department additionally held that permitting the victim to hold the teddy bear was \u201centirely appropriate in view of Executive Law \u00a7 642\u2013a(4), which directs the judge presiding at a trial of this type to be sensitive to the psychological and emotional stress a child witness may undergo when testifying.\u201d\n\nBecause courthouse therapy dogs serve an analogous function to teddy bears and other comfort items, they could be permitted under a similar analysis. But not everyone thinks courthouse therapy dogs should be allowed. In Part II of the two-part series, I will explore these counter-arguments and analyze whether the trial court\u2019s decision in People v. Tohom<\/em> to allow Rosie to accompany the victim to the witness stand was appropriate.","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the first post of her two-part series, Danielle Coffey introduces us to courthouse therapy dog programs and the effect they have on testifying victims.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":785,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[256,420,494,1629],"class_list":["post-783","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-student-blogs","tag-canines","tag-criminal-law","tag-dogs","tag-victims"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/783","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=783"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/783\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/785"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=783"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=783"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=783"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}