Under Rule 701, which statement describes lay opinion testimony?

• A. The opinion must be based on specialized knowledge.
• B. The opinion must be learned from experiments.
• C. The opinion must be rationally based on the witness's perception and helpful to understanding; not based on specialized knowledge.
• D. The opinion can address the ultimate issue in all cases.

Answer: (C)

The key idea is how lay witness opinions are treated under Rule 701: they must come from the witness’s own perceptions and be helpful to the jury’s understanding, and they cannot be based on specialized knowledge or technical expertise. This lets a non-expert witness offer reasonable inferences drawn from things they directly observed, like someone’s speed, emotions, or actions, without needing to be trained as an expert.

So the best statement says the opinion is rationally based on the witness’s perception and helpful to understanding, and not based on specialized knowledge. That captures the essence of lay opinion: useful simplifications or inferences from everyday perception, not conclusions that require expert theory or testing.

The other options stray because they describe requirements for expert testimony (based on specialized knowledge or learned from experiments) or make an overly broad claim about addressing ultimate issues in all cases, which isn’t the defining rule for lay opinions.