Opinion ID: 3013806
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: am going to sustain the objection.” We

Text: believe that this statement adequately Agnew next contends that the reveals the Court’s reasons for sustaining district court erred in preventing him from the objection: it agreed with the arguments cross-examining Dawson using the contained in the government’s brief.2 In witness’s sixteen-year-old forgery any case, we find that the Court’s decision conviction. He argues that we should should be affirmed even under a plenary review the district court’s decision de standard of review. novo, and that the evidence should have been admitted because it would have B. helped resolve a dispute between two witnesses—Dawson and Agnew— about Federal Rule of Evidence 609(a) who owned the gun found in Agnew’s permits parties to use evidence of a past room. conviction to impeach witnesses “if it involved dishonesty or false statement.”
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