Opinion ID: 2431316
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Prior Cases Construing the Statute

Text: This Court first faced the issue of whether the conviction of a non-credibility misdemeanor could be used to impeach the credibility of a witness in Blitz, 71 S.W. 1027, eight years after the legislature had enacted section 491.050. The Court based its decision in Blitz on the criminal offense terminology. This case involved a defendant charged with grand larceny. The prosecution impeached three of defendant's witnesses by showing one kept a house of prostitution, another had been convicted for frequenting a bawdy house and for being in adultery with a woman, and the third had been convicted of fighting. The Court pointed out that prior to the enactment of section 491.050, it was the settled law of this state that the only convictions of a witness admissible for purpose of impeachment were those for a felony or petit larceny. Id. at 1030. The Court quoted the statute and based its holding that a non-credibility misdemeanor may be used for impeachment purposes upon the conclusion that the use of the term criminal offense in section 491.050 incorporated the specific definition of that term from section 556.010. The Court stated: This leads us to inquire, what is a criminal offense? We are not left in doubt as to this. The term criminal offense was doubtless used, and will be presumed to have been used, in section [491.050], with full knowledge of the meaning of that term as defined in section [556.010], which provides, The terms `crime,' `offense' and `criminal offense,' when used in this or any other statute, shall be construed to mean any offense, as well misdemeanor as felony, for which any punishment by imprisonment or fine or both may by law be inflicted. ... This act was not simply declaratory of the well-settled rule that a prior conviction of a witness had to be as to an infamous crime. If such had been the intention of the legislature, they would have used in section [491.050] the term infamous crime, instead of criminal offense, both of which terms are clearly defined by our statute. If the term infamous crime had been used, then, clearly, would it [sic] be held as simply declaratory of the well-settled rule; but instead they use the broad term, criminal offense, which presumptively was used in the sense as defined by the statute. Blitz, 71 S.W. at 1030. Ironically, the Blitz Court readily acknowledged that the rule it adopted was both unwise and was a radical change in the common law of evidence. The Court stated: It is further urged that a penal offense, not infamous, is not necessarily inconsistent with a good moral character. This might furnish a valid reason against the enactment of the law, but furnishes none against declaring it as the law after it is enacted. Had the language of this statute been called to the attention of the learned judges who decided the cases of State v. Prendible, 165 Mo. 329, 65 S.W. 559 and State v. Grant, 144 Mo. 56, 45 S.W. 1102 [two court of appeals cases which had continued to apply the old rule excluding non-credibility misdemeanors for impeachment despite the enactment of section 491.050], and had the attention of our learned and esteemed Brother Bland been specially called to all the statutes bearing upon this question, doubtless all of them would have said: We doubt the wisdom of this radical alteration in the rules of evidence, yet it has been so altered by the lawmaking power, and we will declare the law so to be. While we doubt very seriously the wisdom of this sudden and apparently unnecessary change of the long-established rules of evidence, which have been uniformly followed for so many years, doubtless on account of their being based upon that most appropriate foundation of reason and justice, yet, if this change is unwise and was ill-considered, the more strictly it is enforced the sooner its defects will appear, and the sooner will the power that created it bring about its destruction. Id. at 1030-31. Because hindsight is better than foresight, it does not take an accomplished legal historian to observe that the lack of wisdom evidenced by the rule adopted in Blitz is exceeded only by the misplaced optimism in the expectation that the legislature would correct the problem and that it would do so sooner if the unwise rule were strictly enforced. Since Blitz , the Missouri courts have periodically added to the line of decisions that acknowledge the fallacy in allowing the use of non-credibility misdemeanors to impeach while stubbornly deferring to the Court's construction of sections 491.050 and 556.010 in Blitz and optimistically expressing hope for a legislative solution that has failed to materialize. See Forbis v. Associated Wholesale Grocers, Inc., 513 S.W.2d 760 (Mo.App.1974) (in a wrongful death action, defendant's conviction, approximately six months prior to the events in this case, for speeding and a conviction of defendant when he was 17 years old for passing in a no passing zone, could come in on cross-examination because section 491.050 confers an absolute right to show prior convictions to impeach the defendant); Franklin v. Friedrich, 470 S.W.2d 474 (Mo.1971) (personal injury accident in which defendant was properly impeached with his plea of guilty to a careless and imprudent driving charge, which arose out of the same accident that gave rise to the civil action; this conviction was admitted as both impeaching evidence and as substantive evidence of careless driving because defendant pled guilty to the charge; see footnote 5 and the associated text); State v. Cox, 333 S.W.2d 25, 29 (Mo.1960) (defendant charged with involuntary manslaughter when the vehicle he was driving, while intoxicated and engaged in a drag race with another vehicle, rear-ended a third vehicle killing both the driver and a passenger; held it was proper to impeach defendant on cross-examination with his prior conviction of operating a motor vehicle without a state driver's license); Hoover v. Denton, 335 S.W.2d 46 (Mo.1960) (negligence action arising out of an automobile collision; on cross-examination the Court allowed the defense to question plaintiff about his convictions for careless driving and driving on the wrong side of the road at the time of that same collision); and Fisher v. Gunn, 270 S.W.2d 869 (Mo.1954) (plaintiff allowed to impeach defendant in a personal injury action by showing his conviction for careless and imprudent driving also at the time of the collision in which plaintiff was injured). This is the first case involving the issue of the use of a non-credibility misdemeanor to impeach since the legislative changes in 1979 and 1981. As such, it is this Court's first opportunity in nearly 100 years to correct this unwise rule of impeachment. The use of the term criminal offense in section 491.050 as defined in section 556.010 brought us to the irrational rule we are now applying. Therefore, the elimination of that phrase and the repeal of that definition affords an opportunity to correct something that has needed correcting for a long time. In the present case, the majority has avoided ruling on this issue. If we decide in the future to continue our present interpretation of section 491.050, we will not only have missed our chance to correct and improve the law, but we will have created precedent to the effect that the statutory change was not significant. If we stick with that course of action, we will no longer have the excuse of blaming this otherwise inexplicable rule of impeachment on the legislature.