Opinion ID: 3013806
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Forgery, of course, involves dishonesty

Text: and false statement. Wagner v. Firestone Agnew concedes that we usually Tire & Rubber Co., 890 F.2d 652, 655 n.3 review decisions to exclude evidence for (3d Cir. 1989). But Rule 609(b) states that abuse of discretion. See United States v. Saada, 212 F.3d 210, 220 (3d Cir. 2000). Evidence of a conviction He contends that we should employ under this rule is not plenary review here, however, because the record does not reflect that the district court actually exercised its discretion. 2 The government’s argument was that Agnew had numerous other avenues for In United States v. Himelwright, 42 cross-examination, including a more recent F.3d 777 (3d Cir. 1994), we stated that conviction for passing a bad check, and “[w]here . . . the district court fails to that the probative value of the forgery explain its grounds for denying a [Federal] conviction was small. 5 admissible if a period of forgery conviction. more than ten years has elapsed since the date of the conviction . . . unless the CONCLUSION court determines, in the interests of justice, that the For the reasons stated, we will probative value of the AFFIRM the conviction. conviction supported by spec ific facts and circumstances substantially outweighs its prejudicial effect. Here, Dawson’s conviction was more than ten years old. We find that the probative value of the evidence of Dawson’s forgery conviction was sufficiently small that the “interests of justice” did not warrant its admission, and that any error in refusing to admit the evidence was harmless. See United States v. Colletti, 984 F.2d 1339, 1343 (3d Cir. 1992) (employing harmless- error analysis in the Rule 609(b) context). Two witnesses other than Dawson testified that Agnew sold crack numerous times, and Agnew admitted as much shortly after the crime. The police found cocaine in Agnew’s shoes. Likewise, Agnew admitted that he knew that the gun had “come from” two individuals named “Nature” and “Light,” and a police officer testified that drug dealers commonly keep guns at their disposal. Indeed, the jury had already learned that Dawson used crack cocaine. It would not have resolved the question of ownership of the gun and drugs in favor of Agnew simply because it also learned that Dawson had an old 6