Opinion ID: 280033
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Evans' Character Witnesses

Text: 127 Evans sought to elicit testimony of his good character through four witnesses. Conceding the somewhat inept manner in which this undertaking was attempted by Evans' counsel, the district judge's treatment of these efforts was nevertheless unduly restrictive. Throughout the course of defense counsel's efforts to question the character witnesses, Government counsel interposed objections to all questions directed to an assessment of Evans' general reputation as an honest, truthful, and law-abiding citizen. On almost every occasion, these objections were indiscriminately advanced by the simple statement, 'I object.' With equal regularity, the judge sustained the objections, only rarely intimating the reasons for this action. 128 At one point, Evans' counsel obviously frustrated and bewildered, asked the judge to elaborate on his prior statement that 'the question is improperly put.' In response, the judge should have either demanded that Government counsel frame his objections in more concrete and specific terms or sustained the objections in a manner to convey to defense counsel the reason for his rulings. His failure to do so worked an unnecessary and prejudicial hardship on Evans' counsel's efforts to elicit character testimony from his witnesses. 129 In addition, some of the court's rulings sustaining the Government's objections were erroneous. On more than one occasion, a foundation was laid to qualify the witness, and the question posed to the witness was properly phrased. The apparent basis for the rulings sustaining the Government's objections to these particular questions was that the testimony sought related to Evans' reputation in the business community rather than his reputation in the community where he lived. The majority relied on this distinction, stating, 'No foundation was laid to show that these witnesses knew any of the people who lived in the community where Evans resided.' 130 Reputation in the business community, however, is no less probative than reputation in the residential community to show the absence or presence of certain character traits in an accused. In this regard, Professor McCormick's observation is apposite: 131 The reputation is usually said to be limited to that which obtained in the community where the accused lived, but this should be extended to embrace any considerable group with whom he constantly associated in his business, work, or other continued activity, and who might reasonably be thought to have a collective opinion about him. C. McCormick, Handbook of the Law of Evidence 158, at 335 (1954). 132 See also Whiting v. United States, 296 F.2d 512, 517 (1st Cir. 1961). Because the crime charged against Evans had a business setting, the most probative character evidence was kept from the jury by the court's rulings. These rulings were erroneous. They were also prejudicial. For as the Supreme Court said in Michelson v. United States, 335 U.S. 469, 476, 69 S.Ct. 213, 219, 93 L.Ed. 168 (1948), 'This privilege (of presenting character testimony) is sometimes valuable to a defendant for    such testimony alone,    may be enough to raise a reasonable doubt of guilt   .'