Opinion ID: 3010358
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Impeachment of a Corporate Employee with a

Text: Conviction of the Corporation under Rule 609 The plaintiffs next contend that the district court erred in excluding evidence of Georgia-Pacific's 1991 plea of guilty to tax evasion charges based on a fraudulent appraisal of _________________________________________________________________ 14. Palmowski testified, for example, that upon hearing of the plaintiffs' EEOC charges, Watson told him we have to end this situation now. It's gone too far. In addition, the jury heard that Palmowski admitted to Phyllis Estepp that she had been laid off because of the EEOC charge filed by her predecessor, John Crothers. 26 land in Florida in 1984. The plaintiffs sought to introduce this evidence under Fed. R. Evid. 609 to impeach the testimony of individual Georgia-Pacific employee witnesses, none of whom were shown to have any connection to the acts underlying the corporate conviction. The district court excluded the evidence under Fed. R. Evid. 403, finding that introduction of the evidence would be unduly prejudicial. The plaintiffs contend on appeal that use of this conviction falls under the automatic admission provision of Fed. R. Evid. 609(a)(2), and is therefore not subject to a Rule 403 analysis. Our review of the exclusion is plenary, as the construction of Rule 609 is an issue of law. See United States v. Pelullo, 964 F.2d 193, 199 (3d Cir. 1992). Fed. R. Evid. 609, as amended in 1990, provides in relevant part: (a) General Rule. For the purpose of attacking the credibility of a witness, (1) evidence that a witness other than the accused has been convicted of a crime shall be admitted, subject to Rule 403, if the crime was punishable by death or imprisonment in excess of one year under the law under which the witness was convicted . . . ; and (2) evidence that any witness has been convicted of a crime shall be admitted if it involved dishonesty or false statement, regardless of the punishment. Thus, if the prior conviction involved dishonesty or false statements, the conviction is automatically admissible insofar as the district court is without discretion to weigh the prejudicial effect of the proffered evidence against its probative value. See Cree v. Hatcher, 969 F.2d 34, 37 (3d Cir. 1992); United States v. Wong, 703 F.2d 65, 68 (3d Cir. 1983). Because Rule 609(a)(2) does not permit the district court to engage in balancing, we have held that Rule 609(a)(2) must be construed narrowly to apply only to those crimes that bear on a witness' propensity to testify truthfully. See Cree, 969 F.2d at 37. We assume arguendo that Georgia-Pacific's conviction for tax evasion falls within the ambit of 609(a)(2). The real question before us is whether prior convictions of a 27 corporation are admissible under Rule 609 generally to impeach the testimony of individual employee witnesses without any evidence that those witnesses participated in the conduct underlying the conviction. This is a question of first impression in this circuit, and so we write on tabula rasa. Rule 609 is premised on the common sense proposition that one who has transgressed society's norms by committing a felony is less likely than most to be deterred from lying under oath. Cummings v. Malone, 995 F.2d 817, 826 (8th Cir. 1993) (citing Campbell v. Greer, 831 F.2d 700, 707 (7th Cir. 1987)). Rule 609 evidence is admitted in order to inform the jury about the character of the witnesses whose testimony the jury is asked to believe. See United States v. Martinez, 555 F.2d 1273, 1275 (5th Cir. 1977). The automatic admission provision of Rule 609(a)(2) expresses the idea that some individuals who are found to have been dishonest in other contexts are presumed to be more prone to perjury than others. See Conf. Rep. No. 1597, 93d Cong., 2d Sess., reprinted in 1974 U.S.C.C.A.N. 7051, 7098, 7103. We have held that admissibility under Rule 609(a)(2) turns on whether the evidence of the crime bears on the witness's propensity for falsehood, deceit, or deception. Cree, 969 F.2d at 38. It is only the testifying witness' own convictions that will bear directly on the likelihood that he or she will testify truthfully. See United States v. Hayes, 553 F.2d 824, 827 (2d Cir. 1977). Accordingly, it is axiomatic that it is only the testifying witness' own prior convictions that should be admissible on cross-examination to impeach his credibility. See United States v. Austin, 786 F.2d 986, 992 (10th Cir. 1986). Thus, for the plaintiffs' position to be correct, the 1991 Georgia-Pacific conviction must be the individual employee's own in some meaningful fashion. We believe that this cannot be the case. Criminal acts are relevant to a witness' credibility only if that witness actually participated in the criminal conduct.15 It strains logic to _________________________________________________________________ 15. The plaintiffs contend in their reply brief that the Supreme Court's pre-Rules decision in United States v. Trenton Potteries Co., 273 U.S. 392 28 argue that an employee's credibility is properly brought into question by the mere fact that he or she is presently employed by a corporation that in some unrelated manner was guilty of dishonest acts, no matter how egregious those acts may have been. There is no evidence that the individual witnesses who testified at trial had any involvement with Georgia-Pacific's tax evasion scheme, and thus that scheme could not possibly bear on the likelihood that those witnesses would testify truthfully.16 _________________________________________________________________ (1927), stands for the proposition that corporate convictions are admissible to demonstrate the bias of the employee witness. They cite the Court's holding that a corporate employee could be cross-examined on prior corporate convictions if admissibility of the evidence was urged on the ground that it was directed to the bias of the witness, or that it was preliminary to showing his implication in the supposed offense, and thus affecting his credibility. Id. at 404-05 (internal citations omitted). Aside from the fact that this case was decided decades before Rule 609 was enacted, we believe that Trenton Potteries stands squarely for the proposition that the witness must be implicated in the corporate conviction in order for evidence of the conviction to be proper impeachment material. This is clear from the Court's language; the corporate conviction is relevant if it is preliminary to demonstrating the witness' own implication in the offense. While Trenton Potteries also suggests that the corporate conviction could be used to demonstrate that the witness is biased, such a bias inquiry is irrelevant to our consideration under Rule 609(a)(2). That is, the question presently at issue is whether the corporate conviction bears on the individual witness's propensity to commit perjury as a convicted felon, not whether the existence of the conviction somehow would bias the individual employee witness toward the corporation. 16. The only reported decision since the adoption of the Federal Rules of Evidence to address this question, CGM Contractors, Inc. v. Contractors Environmental Services, Inc., 383 S.E.2d 861 (W. Va. 1989), arose under the West Virginia Rules of Evidence. Based on those rules (which are identical to the federal rules in pertinent part), the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals held that a corporate conviction is admissible against a witness only if the witness held a managerial position at the time the crime occurred such that it may be fairly inferred that he shared responsibility for the criminal act, or have actually participated in the criminal act. 383 S.E.2d 866. Although we need not announce a similar rule to resolve the present case, our reasoning and that of the West Virginia court are consistent, and we believe that the ratio decidendi of the West Virginia court is sensible in light of the policies upon which Rule 609 is based. 29 Plaintiffs contend that the mandatory nature of Rule 609(a)(2) precludes the district court from exercising any discretion over the admissibility of the Georgia-Pacific convictions. While the plaintiffs are correct that the district court would be precluded from exercising its Rule 403 balancing discretion if the evidence was properly within Rule 609(a)(2), the district court is not precluded from determining whether the prior corporate conviction falls within the ambit of Rule 609 at all. Only if the witness is directly connected to a prior conviction for a crime involving dishonesty or a false statement does Rule 609(a)(2)'s automatic admission provision apply. To allow Rule 609(a)(2) to apply otherwise would be to override the fundamental purpose of impeachment evidence, namely, to expose a defect in the witness's credibility. Glen Weissenberger, Federal Rules of Evidence 285-86 (1995). In sum, we find that Rule 609 does not permit corporate convictions to be used to impeach the credibility of employee witnesses who were not directly connected to the underlying criminal act. Since there was no evidence of such a connection in the present case, the district court properly excluded the Georgia-Pacific convictions as improper impeachment evidence. The order of the district court will be affirmed. A True Copy: Teste: Clerk of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit 30