Opinion ID: 1855618
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: did the court err in allowing the state to use a prior felony conviction of possession of cocaine to challenge the credibility of defense witness devon reese?

Text: ¶ 20. McCullough asserts that the attack upon defense witness, Devon Reese, by use of a prior conviction was improper and in violation of M.R.E. 609(a). The testimony elicited from Reese was as follows: Q. Have you ever been convicted of a crime? A. Yeah. Q. And what was that? A. Uhpossession of cocaine. ¶ 21. Although McCullough did not preserve the issue for appeal due to his failure to make a contemporaneous objection, this Court will discuss the issue anyway. Johnson v. State, 477 So.2d 196 (Miss.1985). ¶ 22. M.R.E. 609(a) states as follows: (a) General Rule. For the purpose of attacking the credibility of a witness, evidence that he has been convicted of a crime shall be admitted if elicited from him or established by public record during cross-examination but only if the crime (1) was punishable by death or imprisonment in excess of one year under the law under which he was convicted, and the court determines that the probative value of admitting this evidence outweighs its prejudicial effect on a party or (2) involved dishonesty or false statement, regardless of the punishment. ¶ 23. The official comment to M.R.E. 608 discusses the situation at bar as follows: Subsection [608](b) prohibits the impeachment of a witness by specific acts of conduct, but it provides two important exceptions. First, a witness may be impeached by a criminal conviction. Rule 609 governs the kinds of criminal convictions which may be used to attack a witness. Mississippi has traditionally allowed a witness to be impeached by evidence of a criminal conviction but not by other specific acts. See Vick v. Cockran[Cochran], 316 So.2d 242 (Miss. 1975); Allison v. State, 274 So.2d 678 (Miss.1973). Details of the crime may not be elicited. ¶ 24. McCullough asserts that Peterson v. State, 518 So.2d 632 (Miss.1987) requires more than a simple statement that the probative value of the evidence outweighs the prejudicial value. Peterson laid out the factors that a trial judge should consider before admitting M.R.E. 609 evidence. Peterson, 518 So.2d at 636. This Court specifically stated that the trial judge must specifically weigh, on-the-record, those factors which make the conviction probative against those factors which make the evidence of the conviction prejudicial. However, the case sub judice may be distinguished from Peterson in several respects. In Peterson, the Court found that the impeachment evidence was so similar to the crime for which Peterson was being tried that the prejudicial effect outweighed the value of the conviction for impeachment purposes. McCullough's witness, Devon Reese, was impeached with a prior conviction for possession of cocaine. McCullough was on trial for aggravated assault. Certainly, these two crimes are not even remotely similar. Furthermore, to compare a defense witness's prior convictions to the crime or crimes for which the defendant is being tried is to confuse the issue. It is the proverbial mixing of apples and oranges. Indeed, this point leads to the second distinction. In Peterson, it was the defendant's own prior convictions which were admitted. In this case, it was a witness for the defense whose testimony was impeached by the evidence of a prior conviction of that witness, not by prior convictions of the defendant. Finally, and most importantly, although the trial judge did not specifically state that she was considering the Peterson factors, all of the factors set out in Peterson, with the exclusion of those that would pertain to admission of evidence impeaching a defendant's testimony, were discussed at length before the judge by counsel for both parties. We find that the probative value of the evidence sufficiently outweighed the prejudicial value, and the trial judge was correct in so finding. Therefore, we hold that this issue is without merit.