Opinion ID: 363011
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Admission of 16-year-old military conviction

Text: 16 The defendant testified, and on cross-examination the prosecution impeached his credibility by eliciting the fact of his prior military conviction for larceny. 9 The defendant has raised several objections to this use of his prior military conviction. 10 Because we conclude that under Fed.R.Evid. 609(b) the trial judge abused his discretion in admitting Cathey's 16-year-old conviction, 11 we do not reach his other objections. 17 While stationed in Turkey, Cathey was convicted by general court-martial of five specifications of theft of Air Force Exchange merchandise. 12 He was sentenced to two years hard labor, was released from military confinement June 31, 1961, and called to testify in October 1977. The prior conviction was therefore a little more than 16 years old when offered into evidence as measured by the standards of Rule 609(b). See U. S. v. Cohen,544 F.2d 781, 784 (CA5), Cert. denied, 431 U.S. 914, 97 S.Ct. 2175, 53 L.Ed.2d 224 (1977). 13 Accordingly Rule 609(b)'s standard of admissibility for convictions over 10 years old applies: 18 Evidence of a conviction under this rule is not admissible if a period of more than ten years has elapsed . . . unless the court determines, in the interests of justice, that the probative value of the conviction supported by specific facts and circumstances substantially outweighs its prejudicial effect. 19 As originally presented to Congress, Rule 609(b) made inadmissible all convictions over 10 years old. Although Congress amended the Rule to allow for the use of prior convictions over 10 years old in some circumstances, the legislative history makes clear that convictions over 10 years old will be admitted very rarely and only in exceptional circumstances. Sen.Rep. No. 1277, 93d Cong. 2d Sess. 4, Reprinted in 1974 U.S.Code Cong. & Admin.News pp. 7051, 7062. Rule 609(b) must be interpreted in light of the gloss Congress placed on the Rule's standard of admissibility. We conclude that by use of the term exceptional circumstances Congress intended the courts to take account of the need for using a prior conviction as an essential element of the probative value prejudicial effect balancing test mandated by Rule 609(b). The exceptional circumstances idea expressed in the legislative history responds to the interests of justice language of Rule 609(b). 14 20 Before analyzing the factors that go into the balancing of the probative value against the prejudicial effect of a prior conviction under 609(b), we emphasize this court's conclusion in Mills v. Estelle, 552 F.2d 119, 120 (CA5), Cert. denied, 434 U.S. 871, 89 S.Ct. 214, 54 L.Ed.2d 149 (1977), that 609(b) establishes a presumption against the use of more than 10-year-old convictions. The court's conclusion is supported by both the language of the Rule as well as the legislative history. Rule 609(b) makes over-age convictions inadmissible unless the court makes the required finding of probative value. The general rule, therefore, is inadmissibility. Moreover, in the Senate Report on the Rules of Evidence, the Senate noted that convictions over ten years old generally do not have much probative value. Sen.Rep. No. 1277, 93d Cong. 2d Sess. 4, Reprinted in 1974 U.S.Code Cong. & Admin.News pp. 7051, 7061. The presumption against admissibility is, therefore, founded on a legislative perception that the passage of time dissipates the probative value of a prior conviction. Cf. U. S. v. Beechum, 582 F.2d 898, 915 (CA5, 1978) (en banc) (Under Rule 404 temporal remoteness depreciates the probity of the extrinsic offense). The balancing scale Congress has given the courts is weighted against a finding that the probative value of a more than 10-year-old conviction substantially outweighs its prejudicial effect. Therefore, as this court stated in U. S. v. Bibbs, 564 F.2d 1165 (CA5, 1977), Cert. denied, 435 U.S. 1007, 98 S.Ct. 1877, 56 L.Ed.2d 388 (1978), Congress intended that trial judges be extremely cautious in admitting evidence of remote convictions. Id. at 1170. 21 The prior convictions of a witness may only be used by the jury to evaluate the witness's credibility. In spite of the legal rule limiting the use of prior conviction evidence to impeachment purposes, when the witness is the accused the evidence is subject to improper use. U. S. v. Martinez, 555 F.2d 1273, 1275 (CA5, 1977) (quoting U. S. v. Garber, 471 F.2d 212, 215 (CA5, 1972)); See Mills v. Estelle, supra at 120. The jury may misuse the evidence by considering the defendant a person of criminal tendencies and, therefore, more likely to have committed the crime for which he is being tried, Mills v. Estelle, supra at 120, or if the prior conviction is similar to the new charges, the jury may misuse the prior conviction as evidence of guilt, U. S. v. Martinez, supra at 1275, or the jury may just be more willing to convict a person who already has been convicted for a different crime, Mills v. Estelle, supra at 120. 15 When the prior conviction is for a crime distinct from the charges for which the accused is currently being tried, as in this case, the potential for jury misuse of the evidence decreases. U. S. v. Poteet, 573 F.2d 351, 353 (CA5, 1978). Nevertheless, potential prejudice arising from the criminal tendency inference and the jury's willingness to convict an already once convicted person remains quite real. 22 We now turn to the probative value portion of Rule 609(b)'s equation. The probative value of a prior conviction is a function of at least two factors, the nature of the past crime and the remoteness of the conviction. Crimes involving dishonesty or false statement are often more probative of the witness's lack of credibility than even more serious crimes involving violence. Rule 609(a) incorporates this distinction between types of crimes. Whether this defendant's military conviction was for a crime involving dishonesty or false statement is a matter of dispute between the parties. 16 On the view we take of this case, it is not necessary to resolve this dispute. Assuming that the military conviction was for a crime involving dishonesty, that is insufficient justification, by itself, for use of the prior conviction. The presumption against the use of an over-age conviction is not so weak that it falls before a finding that the prior conviction was for a crime involving dishonesty. Judge Tuttle in Mills v. Estelle, supra, noted that Rule 609(b)'s 10-year limit on prior convictions could be conceptualized as a policy statement that if an offender keeps his record unblemished for ten years, he will be presumed to be as truthful as a normal citizen, i. e., that the ten-year period is evidence that the inference supporting use of prior crime impeachment evidence (a lawbreaker is likely to lie) can no longer be drawn about a certain person. Id. at 120. A crime involving dishonesty is more likely to overcome Rule 609(b)'s presumption, but more than that bare conclusion must be shown. 23 In U. S. v. Cohen, supra, we held that the district judge did not abuse his discretion when he allowed the prosecution to impeach the defendant with a 13-year-old conviction for mail fraud. Id. at 785. However, in U. S. v. Bibbs, supra at 1170, decided after Cohen, we recognized as an essential element of Rule 609(b) the necessity of showing exceptional circumstances justifying the use of an over-age prior conviction. Exceptional circumstances were not shown in the instant case. 17 24 In the context of admissibility of over-age convictions exceptional circumstances includes, though it is not limited to, the need of the party offering the evidence to use it. This concept of necessity is relevant to the district judge's evaluation of the probative value of the conviction. Our recent en banc decision in Beechum, interpreting Fed.R.Evid. 404, provides us with guidance. Rule 404 like 609(b) calls on the judge to balance the probative value of the proffered evidence against its prejudicial effect. 18 In Beechum, the court stated that 25 Probity in this context is not an absolute; its value must be determined with regard to the extent to which the defendant's unlawful intent is established by other evidence, stipulation, or inference. It is the incremental probity of the evidence that is to be balanced against its potential for undue prejudice. Thus, if the Government has a strong case on the intent issue, the extrinsic offense may add little and consequently will be excluded more readily. 26 Id. at 914 (footnote and citations omitted). Therefore, when a party wishes to use an over-age conviction, the trial judge must consider whether the witness already has been impeached, and if so, the probative value of the prior conviction decreases accordingly. 27 In this case nothing suggests exceptional circumstances justifying the use of Cathey's prior conviction. The defendant's credibility had already been well impeached by the government's cross-examination during which he had been caught in various contradictions and numerous misstatements. There was little need to add the icing of his military conviction. The district court mentioned that on direct examination Cathey had testified to his accumulation of a cash hoard during his military career, and, of course, the court-martial for stealing occurred during his military service. Possibly the court considered the conviction as bearing on the credibility of defendant's claim that he had accumulated a cash hoard. If anything, the conviction of stealing at the time Cathey claimed he was accumulating his cash hoard, bolsters his credibility with respect to a hoard rather than impeaches it. Absent some additional factor justifying the use of the prior conviction, there is no basis for concluding that it falls within the exceptional circumstances caveat to the general prohibition against the use of a conviction more than 10 years old. 28 The government says the error was harmless. We cannot say that it did not influence the jury or that it had very slight effect. Kotteakos v. U. S., 328 U.S. 750, 66 S.Ct. 1239, 90 L.Ed. 1557 (1946). The government argues that Cathey already had been caught in so many falsehoods on cross-examination that the additional blow could not have hurt. We agree that he had been well impeached, and, because he had, there was no need for the prosecution to use the 16-year-old conviction. The right to use evidence of prior convictions to impeach is tempered by the need to use it. It would be anomalous indeed to conclude that the less the prosecutor needs the evidence the freer he is to use it. 29 REVERSED.