“Is a Victim’s Testimony Alone Good Enough?”

The Alec & Lydia Act: Deep Dive #1

In our introductory post on June 27, I promised to discuss the different ways that new House Bill 2995 did not change Arizona law, despite outcry or applause to the contrary. If you don’t want to read the history and deeper explanation, just skip to last section (“Short Version”) below!

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Today’s Myth: The new Act changes how testimony works! Now a DV survivor’s testimony is good enough all by itself!

Today’s Answer: Victim testimony has been good enough in America for 250 years.

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Let’s start somewhere peculiar: Article III, Section 3 of our American Constitution.

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to the Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.

The leaders of our new republic knew of England’s unhappy legacy of runaway Crown prosecutions for treason. In particular, they knew of the proven, royal habit of chasing political enemies who had chosen to “compass or imagine the Death of our Lord the King, of our Lady his Queen or of their eldest Son and Heir”, which had met the English definition of treason for centuries.

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Apparently, though, younger brothers of the Crown Prince were fair game … at least at the Feast of Saint Hilary in January 1351, when they gathered to joust, play some hoops, pass a law or two, and marvel at surviving the Black Death.

🦟🐀

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Anyway, having just committed treason themselves(!), the Founding Fathers solved this pesky problem three ways. First, they tightened that definition, forever authorizing Americans to “imagine the Death” of any king who comes to mind. Second, they specified the method of punishment. Third, and most relevant to this post, they explained what evidence could win a conviction: two witnesses or an open-court confession.

To date, treason is the only crime for which our Constitution imposes guidance and guardrails.

How does that relate to today’s discussion about domestic violence?

Well, look at some of the major felonies that existed back in 1789 for which our republic did not impose special “proof” requirements: murder, rape, robbery, arson, burglary, and larceny. There was no consensus that the unsupported word of a crime victim was somehow deficient. In fact, our new country purposely moved away from that policy, which was common on the European Continent as a descendant of Roman-era “civil canon”.

It is true that, in the late 1800s and early 1900s, a minority of our States began tacking on special rules or laws aimed at female crime victims who reported sexual assault. However, beginning in the late 1970s, these statutes and policies rapidly collapsed from recognition that they were distasteful, unfairly discriminatory, and assumed—with zero basis—that one gender was genetically more likely to lie under oath than the other.

Arizona case law has dependably supported the idea that a single person’s testimony (man or woman) can support even a serious criminal conviction, which requires proof with no reasonable doubt. That is the highest courtroom burden in our land. Way higher than the expectation in family court.

That case law includes solid precedent from the Arizona Court of Appeals, such as State v. Montano, 121 Ariz. 147, 149 (App. 1978) (conviction and four-year prison term upheld for fleeing and eluding police, despite solitary officer testifying in competition with seven defense witnesses; “one witness, if relevant and credible, is sufficient to support a conviction”). It also includes State v. McMurry, 20 Ariz. App. 415, 419 (1973) (“The universal rule is that the courts will not engage in a numbers game[,] and that the strength or weakness of testimony is not measured by the number of witnesses”).

In half a century, that rule hasn’t gone anywhere. Indeed, just yesterday, the Court of Appeals repeated the message in Wilson v. Wilson, No. 2 CA-CV 2025-0375 FC (Ariz. App. June 30, 2026) (Unpub.)

In Wilson, which involved a domestic violence order of protection (OOP), the defendant complained on appeal that his former wife’s testimony—supported only by a photograph of two bruises—was inadequate to support the OOP. The appellate panel disagreed, noting that the plaintiff’s testimony would have been enough by itself, even without the injury photo. The panel then cited another Arizona case, State v. Munoz, 114 Ariz. 466, 469 (App. 1966), which emphasized this rule yet again.

[Kudos, by the way, to Ms. Katelyn Morgan, Esq., who advocated as the victim’s appellate counsel and works as a partner at Valley Law Group, LLC.]

It is worth noting, too, that Wilson is an unpublished memorandum decision. When the Court of Appeals decides not to publish a decision as a formal “opinion”, it tends to mean they consider it unnecessary. In most instances, that’s because the grievances raised were not complex, remarkable, or new but instead required the panel to merely repeat well-known principles of law.

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Short Version

Subsection C of the new Alec & Lydia Act announces:

A domestic violence claim shall be established by a preponderance of the evidence. Corroboration from exhibits or witness testimony of another person is not required.

We did not script that new language to design a new legal concept. We added it because our justice system had been obligated to follow that rule for decades, but some courts weren’t doing it. This was especially true in the domestic violence arena.

Furthermore, too many victims were afraid even to reveal domestic violence in the first place—never mind make it all the way to trial—because family, friends, or others had wrongly told them that their word alone “wasn’t good enough”. That constant misinformation is a problem.

Of course, none of this means a DV survivor should be casual about proving their case. Nor should a victim expect to convince the judge of anything just by announcing “coercive control” in a courtroom … expecting those two magic words alone to win their trial. It doesn’t work that way! This is why that same Subsection C of the Act also suggests different types of evidence worth collecting.

However, this new language does set the record straight about what is legally allowed. So, if an honest, believable domestic violence survivor testifies against an adversary who is not so believable—and it’s just one person’s word against the other’s—there is nothing in Arizona law to stop a family court from siding with that survivor.

And there never was.