Abstract
In Chapman v. State, the Wyoming Supreme Court confronted the issue of whether a witness whose memory had been refreshed by hypnosis should be allowed to testify in court. A majority of the courts addressing this issue have held that pretrial hypnosis affects the credibility, not the competency, of a witness. The rationale for this majority position is that the traditional safeguards of cross-examination and expert testimony concerning hypnosis allow the trier of fact to judge effectively the credibility of posthypnotic testimony. A recent trend has developed, however, in which several courts have rejected the "credibility view" and have held that pretrial hypnosis affects the competency of a witness to testify. This trend has been influenced by recent scholarly warnings concerning the unreliability of hypnosis and the inadequacy of traditional safeguards in allowing the trier of fact to judge the accuracy of posthypnotic testimony. Despite these warnings, the Chapman court followed the majority rule that hypnosis affects the credibility, not the competency, of a witness. Chapman is the first case to uphold the majority rule in the face of the recent trend toward excluding posthypnotic testimony.
Recommended Citation
Callister, Mark L.
(1983)
"Chapman v. State: Hypnotically Refreshed Testimony-
An Issue of Admissibility or Credibility,"
Utah Law Review: Vol. 1983:
No.
2, Article 5.
Available at:
https://dc.law.utah.edu/ulr/vol1983/iss2/5