Competency
Applied in 31 court decisions — leading case Kentucky v. Stincer (1987)
Most recently applied in Ho Yim v. William Barr (August 2020)
Amended by Stats. 1985, Ch. 884, Sec. 2.
Court decisions citing this, by year. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.
(a) A person is disqualified to be a witness if he or she is:
(1) Incapable of expressing himself or herself concerning the matter so as to be understood, either directly or through interpretation by one who can understand him; or
(2) Incapable of understanding the duty of a witness to tell the truth.
(b) In any proceeding held outside the presence of a jury, the court may reserve challenges to the competency of a witness until the conclusion of the direct examination of that witness.
Official source: California Legislative Information. Reproduced from public-domain California statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.