Opinion ID: 1888913
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Admissibility of the Conviction

Text: As noted, despite its disagreement on the issue of waiver, three judges would hold that the prior conviction was admissible. That holding rests on two prongs: (1) that possession with intent to distribute a controlled dangerous substance is a crime relevant to credibility and is therefore within the universe of crimes admissible for impeachment purposes, and (2) that in this case, the probative value of that conviction, as impeachment evidence, outweighed the danger of unfair prejudice to petitioner. I disagree with both conclusions. [6] Until 1995, this Court had not ruled whether a conviction for possession with intent to distribute a controlled dangerous substance is within the universe of crimes admissible for impeachment purposes under Rule 5-609. In Lowery v. State, 292 Md. 2, 437 A.2d 193 (1981), we held, and in Morales v. State, 325 Md. 330, 339, 600 A.2d 851, 855 (1992), we confirmed, that mere possession of a controlled dangerous substance (PCP) was neither an infamous crime nor one relevant to credibility and was therefore inadmissible as impeachment evidence. In Morales, we concluded that possession with intent to distribute a controlled dangerous substance was not an infamous crime but found it unnecessary in that case to determine whether a conviction for that offense could ever be used to impeach a witness. Morales, supra, 325 Md. at 339, 600 A.2d at 855. In Giddens v. State, 97 Md.App. 582, 631 A.2d 499 (1993), the question arose whether a conviction for distribution of cocaine was usable as impeachment evidence under the predecessor rule to Rule 5-609. Because it was clear that the offense was not an infamous crime, the particular question was whether it had any relevance to credibility. Germane to that determination was the fact that, in Foster v. State, 304 Md. 439, 499 A.2d 1236 (1985), cert. denied, 478 U.S. 1010, 106 S.Ct. 3310, 92 L.Ed.2d 723 (1986), this Court adopted what appears to be the majority rule that, when presenting evidence of a conviction under Rule 5-609, only the fact of the convictionthe name of the crime, the date, and the courtmay be disclosed and that ordinarily one may not go into the details of the crime by which the witness is being impeached. Id. at 470, 499 A.2d at 1252 (quoting State v. Finch, 293 N.C. 132, 235 S.E.2d 819, 824-25 (1977)). That principle was confirmed in State v. Woodland, 337 Md. 519, 524-25, 654 A.2d 1314, 1317 (1995). The Court of Special Appeals noted that the criminal code listed over 200 substances as controlled dangerous substances, plus various salts, isomers, derivatives, and compounds of those substances, and that a person could violate the law by selling a ton of cocaine to sub-dealers throughout a community or by giving a friend a marijuana cigarette. Giddens, supra, 97 Md.App. at 591, 631 A.2d at 503. The distribution could occur in an open air drug market or in the privacy of one's home, furtively in the back of a car or on a public street in broad daylight; it could be part of a secret business enterprise or simply a gift to an acquaintance. Id. The net, the court said, is very large and encompasses a wide variety of conduct, and therein lies the problem. Id. The court pointed out that, in Ricketts v. State, 291 Md. 701, 436 A.2d 906 (1981), this Court had declared a conviction for indecent exposure inadmissible for just that reasonthat the name of the crime says little about the conduct for which the person was convicted and that the gamut of offenses and circumstances that fall within the ambit of the crime are so widely varied that, while one person may indeed have shown a moral depravity sufficient to impact upon his credibility, another may have committed a very minor infraction indicative of nothing more than momentary poor judgment perhaps dictated by necessity. Giddens v. State, 97 Md.App. at 591, 631 A.2d at 503 (quoting Ricketts, supra, 291 Md. at 710, 436 A.2d at 911). We concluded in Ricketts that the crime is so ill-defined that it causes the factfinder to speculate as to what conduct is impacting on the defendant's credibility, it should be excluded, that since the issue is always the truth of the witness, where there is no way to determine whether a crime affects the defendant's testimony simply by the name of the crime that crime should be inadmissible for purposes of impeachment. Ricketts, 291 Md. at 713, 436 A.2d at 913. That concern, the Court of Special Appeals concluded, was equally justified with respect to the crime of distribution, which does not, inherently and of itself, indicate that the person is not to be believed. Giddens v. State, 97 Md.App. at 591, 631 A.2d at 503. Although the behavior is criminal, it is not necessarily dishonest and does not necessarily involve surreptitious conduct or moral depravity sufficient to suggest a lack of credibility. Id. Citing Department of Justice statistics from 1990, the court pointed out that there were nearly 112,000 convictions for drug trafficking in State courts in 1988 and posited that many of those convictions were of of low-level street dealers who are caught because they openly sell drugs to undercover police officers on public streets, sidewalks, and parking lots or are observed in such places openly selling to other passerby. Id. at 592, 631 A.2d at 503-04. [7] This Court disagreed with the intermediate appellate court's conclusion. In State v. Giddens, 335 Md. 205, 642 A.2d 870 (1994), though confirming our earlier holdings that convictions for mere possession of controlled dangerous substances had no bearing on credibility and were therefore inadmissible as impeachment evidence, we held, without noting any supporting empirical evidence, that an individual convicted of cocaine distribution would be willing to lie under oath. Id. at 217, 642 A.2d at 876. We cited United States v. Ortiz, 553 F.2d 782, 784 (2d Cir. 1977) for the proposition that a narcotics trafficker lives a life of secrecy and dissembling in the course of that activity, being prepared to say whatever is required by the demands of the moment, whether the truth or a lie, and, on that premise, held that a prior conviction for distribution of cocaine was relevant to credibility and therefore admissible under Rule 5-609. Giddens, supra, 335 Md. at 217, 642 A.2d at 876. In retrospect, Ortiz does not appear to me to be a particularly persuasive case. For one thing, it was a two-to-one decision authored by a District Court judge over the dissent of a Court of Appeals judge. Moreover, Ortiz was a case like Luce and Jordan, in which, on the basis of an in limine ruling that prior convictions of heroin distribution would be admissible, the defendant never testified and the convictions never got into evidence. The Second Circuit Court of Appeals never should have reached the merits and, under Luce, could not do so today. Finally, the court did not make a determination as a matter of law because, at the time, the Federal rule did not directly require that the conviction be relevant to credibility. It required only that the crime be punishable by death or more than a year in prison and that the probative value of the conviction outweigh its prejudicial effect. In looking at that balance, the appellate court said that the trial judge, in his discretion, was entitled to recognize that a narcotics trafficker lives a life of secrecy and dissembling in the course of that activity, being prepared to say whatever is required by the demands of the moment.... Acknowledging that the crime of distribution may include activity that would have little bearing on a witness's credibility, State v. Giddens, 335 Md. at 217, 642 A.2d at 876, we nonetheless somehow took judicial notice, without citing any evidence in support, that those convicted of cocaine distribution are almost always `drug dealers' in the traditional sense and then jumped to the ultimate conclusion that it is reasonable to conclude that a person is less credible because he or she is a convicted drug dealer. Id. at 218, 642 A.2d at 876. That was quite a leap, of course, from making assumptions about cocaine dealers and then applying those assumptions to any convicted drug dealer, including one who distributed a marijuana cigarette to a friend. Apart from that unwarranted leap, the cases cited for that proposition, to me, are anything but persuasive. The first, other than Ortiz, was State v. Pierce, 107 Idaho 96, 685 P.2d 837 (App.1984), in which the Idaho court, though acknowledging that it would be a strain to characterize delivery of heroin as a crime of dishonesty, concluded that, when coupled with two other felonies of which the defendant had been convictedescape and disruption of a jail showed a pattern of disrespect for law and lawful authority and that such established disrespect is relevant to evaluating whether Pierce would take an oath seriously as a witness and whether he would hesitate to testify untruthfully if it seemed advantageous to do so. Id. at 844. The test in Maryland is not a pattern of disrespect for law and lawful authority, but whether the particular crime is relevant to credibility. The second case cited, People v. Washington, 85 Ill.App.3d 522, 40 Ill.Dec. 954, 407 N.E.2d 185 (1980), followed the Illinois law that unlawful possession or delivery was probative of credibility. That, too, runs counter to our case law. The third case, State v. Lagares, 247 N.J.Super. 392, 589 A.2d 630 (App.Div. 1991), aff'd in part, rev'd in part on other grounds, 127 N.J. 20, 601 A.2d 698 (1992), applied the New Jersey law that the conviction of any crime was admissible as impeachment evidence and allowed evidence of convictions for both simple possession of marijuana and possession with intent to distribute marijuana. What State v. Giddens reveals to me is an unwarranted and uncritical acceptance of assumptions that are simply too general and decisions in other jurisdictions that follow different rules than we do. We compounded that error, in both logic and judgment, in State v. Woodland, 337 Md. 519, 654 A.2d 1314 (1995), in which we blindly followed Giddens and held that, as distribution of CDS was an impeachable offense, so was possession with intent to distribute such a substance. Parroting the statement from Ortiz that a narcotics trafficker lives a life of secrecy and dissembling and is prepared to say whatever is required, we concluded that [o]ur reasoning in Giddens is therefore as applicable to possession with intent to distribute drugs as to distribution. Woodland, at 524, 654 A.2d at 1316. For the reasons noted, I do not accept the conclusion stated in Ortiz as a universal proposition. To me, the Court of Special Appeals got it right in Giddens v. State . The majority of convicted drug traffickersconvicted either of distribution or possession with intent to distributeI expect are the low-level street dealers who carry on their business quite openly. The very numbers suggest that to be the case. I seriously doubt that we are convicting close to 200,000 druglords each year in State courts, especially, in light of long mandatory sentences applicable to such persons, on guilty pleas. [8] The drug importers and kingpins may well possess the attributes ascribed in Ortiz, but they do not constitute the majority (or even a sizable minority) of the people appearing in the State courts. If there was some validity to the Ortiz notion, moreover, it would apply as well to nearly any criminal. Most people who commit crimes, other perhaps than episodic crimes of passion, do so in ways that will avoid discovery, and, in that sense, most convicted criminals, regardless of the crime, can be said to act furtively and in manners that will avoid the truth coming to light. Persons who simply possess drugs unlawfully do not advertise the fact; they secrete the drugs and, upon confrontation, are as likely to dissemble as those who possess drugs as part of a trafficking scheme. If we do not accept that possession is relevant to credibility, what makes possession with intent to distribute relevant? The Court, I fear, went out of bounds in State v. Giddens and extended that march in State v. Woodland . Juries, I think, are quite capable of judging credibility without our throwing into the credibility mix evidence that really has no relevance, or, at best, only the most marginal relevance, to credibility. We should reverse Giddens and Woodland and hold that these crimes are not admissible under Rule 5-609. Finally, even if Giddens and Woodland are to remain the law, it is clear to me that, in this case, the trial court abused its discretion in concluding that the probative value of the conviction outweighed its prejudicial impact. As noted, the conviction was more than six years old and occurred while petitioner was a teenager. We do not know what substance he possessed with intent to distribute or any of the circumstances surrounding the offense. We do not know whether the conviction was based on a guilty plea, which might show some openness rather than secretiveness and dissembling. Under the circumstances, the probative value as to credibility, to me, was virtually nil. On the other hand, given the State's theory of the case and the significant conflict in the evidence, the danger of the jury using the evidence improperly was great. Despite the limiting instruction, which runs counter to most human experience, the jury could very well have concluded from the conviction that petitioner was, indeed, conducting a drug operation in front of the Mitchell home, which would bolster the prosecutor's argument as to the motive for the assault. For these reasons, I would reverse the judgment of the Court of Special Appeals and direct that court to reverse the judgment of the Circuit Court. Chief Judge Bell and Judge Eldridge have authorized me to state that they join in this opinion.