District of Columbia Court of Appeals Grants New Trial Based on Expert’s Testimony About Latino “Machismo Culture”

In Pena-Rodriguez v. Colorado, 580 U.S. 206 (2017), the Supreme Court held that introducing evidence that encourages jurors to “deploy a dangerous racial stereotype to conclude [a defendant is] guilty” runs contrary to the need to “ensure that our legal system remains capable of coming ever closer to the promise of equal treatment under the law that is so central to a functioning democracy.” So, would this principle be violated in a sexual assault action by the introduction of expert testimony regarding Latino “machismo culture”? 

That was the question addressed by the District of Columbia Court of Appeals in its recent opinion in Machado v. United States, 2024 WL 4559526 (D.C. App. 2024).

In Machado, Dagoberto Machado was charged with multiple offenses related to the inappropriate touching of I.A., the young niece of Mr. Machado’s girlfriend. At trial,

the government called Dr. Stephanie Wolf, a child psychologist, “to help [the jury] put all of what [they would] hear about this family in context.” Mr. Machado objected to Dr. Wolf’s testimony and qualification as an expert, both before and during trial. He argued that because Dr. Wolf’s dissertation contained a “suggestion” that there were “higher rates of sexual abuse prevalent among Latino female adolescents,” her testimony could prejudice Mr. Machado, a Latino man accused of sexually abusing a Latina adolescent. The trial court overruled Mr. Machado’s objections and qualified Dr. Wolf as an expert witness with specialized knowledge on “the patterns of child sexual abuse, disclosure of child sexual abuse, symptoms of child sexual abuse, and the clinical needs of victims of child sexual abuse.”

During direct examination, the government asked Dr. Wolf about the barriers in “the social world generally, that would impede somebody—a child from disclosing right away?” Dr. Wolf responded that “[t]here’s often kind of cultural norms that come into play, and so how whatever that child’s culture or ethnicity and kind of communities they’re involved in, how they view sexuality, how they view abuse, how they view the roles of males and females” can all come into play because “different cultures define abuse differently” and those definitions can inform “whether or not the child—you know, if they’re going to give a disclosure, what that might mean for them and what even they use to talk about it.” The government then asked for an example as to how “different cultures differ as to sort of what constitutes abuse,” Dr. Wolf began speaking about Latino culture, and Mr. Machado’s counsel objected. The trial court overruled the objection, but also confirmed with Dr. Wolf that she was “speaking generally about Latino culture” and that she had “no knowledge of this case.” Dr. Wolf went on to testify that within “Latino culture” she sometimes saw “a prescription of machismo and where men have kind of a higher—or different standing within that culture.” This “higher standing” “may impact how sexuality is being viewed and kind of what men are allowed to do sexually and how a woman perhaps is—needs to sometimes succumb to a man’s demands.” (emphasis added).

In finding that the admission of this testimony violated Federal Rule of Evidence 403, the court concluded that

Dr. Wolf’s statements that “there’s a prescription of machismo” in Latino culture “where men have kind of a higher…standing” and “a woman…needs to sometimes succumb to a man’s demands” had, at most, only a tangential connection to any barrier that I.A. faced in reporting. She gave this testimony in response to a question about how “different cultures differ as to…what constitutes abuse,” thus suggesting to the jury that she was speaking more broadly about what a potential perpetrator of abuse may consider acceptable, rather than what a child may do in response to the alleged abuse. And unlike Dr. Wolf’s statements about how circumstances specific to childhood might interfere with a child’s ability to report abuse, generalized statements about machismo culture “bore no relationship to [I.A.] or her specific actions.”…Her testimony about Latino culture did not explain I.A.’s “specific motivations about when and why she reported her abuse and provided no basis for the jury to make any reasonable inferences about [I.A.’s] behavior.” 

The testimony’s minimal probative value is substantially outweighed by its unfair prejudice to Mr. Machado. Racial stereotypes that—even unintentionally—“cast[ ] [the defendant] in the eyes of the jury as a member of a group with values allegedly alien to the rest of society, and therefore imply[ ] that it is more likely that he committed the crime charged,” have no place in a criminal trial….Indeed, introducing evidence that encourages jurors to “deploy a dangerous racial stereotype to conclude [a defendant is] guilty” runs contrary to the need to “ensure that our legal system remains capable of coming ever closer to the promise of equal treatment under the law that is so central to a functioning democracy.” Pena-Rodriguez, 580 U.S. at 224-26, 137 S.Ct. 855.

-CM