What is the impact of memory loss on testimony at a grand jury?

Second, the majority offers that "the jury ... will take memory loss into account in its calculus of the weight that should be accorded to that witness's testimony" (id. ). That might be meaningful in a case such as United States v. Owens, 484 U.S. 554, 108 S.Ct. 838, 98 L.Ed.2d 951 [1988], where the witness had a partial memory and his memory was impaired to some degree by the attack he suffered. In the case of the grand jury testimony of a police officer who testifies truthfully that he no longer has any recollection because of the passage of time, but who was under oath and testified truthfully before the grand jury when he did recall the incident, the jury has no basis to question the accuracy of the testimony based on memory loss. It is hard enough to remember details about a meeting one attended or a movie one saw a few weeks ago; many of the cases on our docket involve gaps between incident and trial of several years (in this case, more than four). No one is suggesting that the majority's decision will cause witnesses to "feign memory loss" (majority op. at 269 n. 6, 100 N.Y.S.3d at 669 n. 6, 124 N.E.3d at 219 n. 6). Heretofore, the grand jury testimony of witnesses who

[33 N.Y.3d 283]