Opinion ID: 853555
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Impeachment without Conviction

Text: Specht claims that the trial court erred by permitting the State to impeach him on the basis of a prior guilty plea that had not been reduced to a conviction. Before the events that led to this case, the State charged Specht with confinement, and he pled guilty. The trial court accepted the plea and, pursuant to the State's recommendation, agreed to withhold judgment until January 5, 1999, and ordered Specht placed on probation. If Specht completed the terms of his probation, the court declared, it would enter judgment on the plea as a class A misdemeanor; if he did not, the court would enter judgment as a class D felony. The court had not yet entered judgment when the present case commenced on August 3, 1998. At trial, the court denied Specht's motion in limine to prohibit evidence of the plea, and overruled Specht's objection to the State's use of the plea to impeach him. Indiana Rule of Evidence 609(a) provides that proof that a witness has been convicted of a crime may be admitted for the purpose of attacking that witness's credibility if the crime involves dishonesty or if it is a crime catalogued in 609(a)(1). The list in Rule 609(a)(1) includes the crime to which Specht had pled guilty, confinement. The issue, then, is whether a guilty plea not yet reduced to judgment constituted a conviction for impeachment purposes. Prior to the adoption of the Indiana Rules of Evidence, we held that it did, stating, when there has been a plea of guilty it is a conviction of crime and the presumption of innocence no longer follows the defendant.... The fact that final judgment was not rendered does not alter the fact that he stands convicted of the crime to which he has entered a plea. McDaniel v. State, 268 Ind. 380, 383, 375 N.E.2d 228, 230 (1978) ( citing State v. Redman, 183 Ind. 332, 109 N.E. 184 (1915)). While the Rules of Evidence generally superceded previously existing common law, Rule 609(a) preserved, rather than replaced, our caselaw regarding impeachment. In proposing that this Court adopt Rule 609(a), our committee said, Rejecting both the [Federal Rules of Evidence] and the [Uniform Rules of Evidence], this section preserves prior Indiana Law. Indiana Supreme Court Committee on the Adoption of the Indiana Rules of Evidence, Proposed Indiana Rules of Evidence [and Commentary] 40 (May 4, 1993). Mr. Specht's lawyers have suggested that our 1978 opinion in McDaniel deployed older caselaw, developed for another purpose, to decide the question at issue. Nevertheless, decide it we did, and we retained existing Indiana law in adopting the Rules of Evidence. McDaniel is still good law. Specht's motion in limine and subsequent objection to the State's impeachment on this basis were properly denied and overruled.