Opinion ID: 201143
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Conviction for Assault and Battery Against a Police Officer

Text: 34 Tse attempted to impeach Williams's credibility by introducing evidence of Williams's prior conviction for assault and battery against a police officer (ABPO). At first, the district court agreed that the evidence was admissible pursuant to Federal Rule of Evidence 609(a)(1). 9 However, at a sidebar conference, the court addressed a related matter: Tse's motion to exclude Tse's own convictions, one of which was for ABPO, if Tse should choose to testify. The court viewed the admissibility of Williams's conviction as closely related to the admissibility of Tse's conviction, stating that [a]lthough it's not an identical analysis, it's close enough that it may be that ... if it's allowed in this case, it would be allowed in the other as well. The court later reiterated: 35 And if a particular offense is admitted as impeachment for the witness under [Rule 609](a)(1), then that may — consistency may result in a similar ruling with respect to the defendant, although I note there is a distinction in (a)(1) between an accused and someone who is not an accused. But since they both — I don't — I know the language makes a distinction. I'm not sure it — the distinction — pertains to the [Rule] 403 aspect of it. 36 After hearing counsel's arguments about whether any of Tse's convictions should be admitted if he were to testify, the court again compared Williams's ABPO conviction to Tse's ABPO conviction, stating that if it's probative enough in one case, it has to be probative enough in the other, it seems to me.... There is a difference [in standards of admissibility], but I'm not sure it's a pertinent difference with respect to this. The court added: I don't know that there's, in fact, a different standard, except that maybe it's a caution to make sure that it has probative value. . . . Finally, the court determined that it would keep them both out, ruling that neither Williams's ABPO conviction nor Tse's ABPO conviction was admissible. Tse objected and now argues on appeal that the court improperly excluded Williams's ABPO conviction. 10 37 Rule 609 provides different standards for admitting prior convictions to impeach the accused and to impeach witnesses other than the accused. When the witness is the accused, evidence of a prior conviction shall be admitted if the court determines that the probative value of admitting this evidence outweighs its prejudicial effect to the accused. Fed.R.Evid. 609. When the witness is other than the accused, such evidence shall be admitted, subject to Rule 403. Id. Rule 403 in turn states that evidence may be excluded if its probative value is substantially outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice, confusion of the issues, or misleading the jury, or by considerations of undue delay, waste of time or needless presentation of cumulative evidence. Fed.R.Evid. 403. 38 This dual approach is the result of a 1990 amendment to Rule 609. Prior to that amendment, the rule did not explicitly distinguish between the accused and witnesses other than the accused. Rather, a district court could admit prior convictions against any witness if it determined that the probative value of admitting this evidence outweigh[ed] its prejudicial effect to the defendant. See 4 Jack B. Weinstein & Margaret A. Berger, Weinstein's Federal Evidence, § 609App.03[1] (Joseph M. McLaughlin, ed., Matthew Bender 2d ed.2004) (stating the language of Rule 609 prior to the 1990 amendment). The language of the rule, explicitly protecting only against prejudice to the defendant in a criminal case, seemingly provided no protection to litigants in civil cases or to prosecution witnesses in criminal cases. See Green v. Bock Laundry Mach. Co., 490 U.S. 504, 509, 527, 109 S.Ct. 1981, 104 L.Ed.2d 557 (1989) (holding that the pre-1990 version of Rule 609 required courts to admit prior convictions against civil litigants regardless of prejudice, and noting that impeaching evidence detrimental to the prosecution in a criminal case `shall be admitted' without any such balancing [of probative value against prejudice]). 39 The 1990 amendment [did] not disturb the special balancing test for the criminal defendant who chooses to testify. Fed. R.Evid. 609 advisory committee's notes on 1990 amendment. Rather, the amendment made prior convictions of witnesses other than the accused explicitly subject to the Rule 403 analysis. See id. ([T]he ordinary balancing test of Rule 403 . . . is appropriate for assessing the admissibility of prior convictions for impeachment of any witness other than a criminal defendant.). 40 This change may not have been aimed explicitly at providing protection for witnesses other than the accused in a criminal trial. See H. Richard Uviller, Essay: Credence, Character, and the Rules of Evidence: Seeing Through the Liar's Tale, 42 Duke L.J. 776, 798 (1993) (A solid argument might be made that the entire purpose to the amendment to Rule 609(a) was to clarify its application to civil cases....). Nevertheless, whether intended or not, ... the amendment of Rule 609(a) has had a dramatic impact on the impeachment of prosecution witnesses in criminal cases. Id. at 798. [P]rosecution witnesses should be shielded from impeachment by prior conviction if revealing the prior conviction would result in prejudice to the prosecution.  Id. at 801 (emphasis in original). Indeed, the Advisory Committee Notes indicate that the drafters were aware of the amendment's impact on government witnesses: 41 Some courts have read Rule 609(a) as giving the government no protection for its witnesses. This approach is ... rejected by the amendment. There are cases in which impeachment of government witnesses with prior convictions that have little, if anything, to do with credibility may result in unfair prejudice to the government's interest in a fair trial and unnecessary embarrassment to a witness. 42 Fed.R.Evid. 609 advisory committee's notes on 1990 amendment (citations omitted). Thus, there is no doubt that we must apply a Rule 403 analysis to prior convictions of government witnesses in a criminal prosecution. 11 43 Although Rule 609 sets out two different evidentiary standards for admitting prior convictions for impeachment, it does not make clear whether the court's application of each standard requires a substantively different analysis. Some commentators have suggested that Rule 609 provides greater protection to the accused than it does to other witnesses in the use of prior convictions for impeachment. See Weinstein, supra, § 609.02 (If the witness to be impeached is the accused in a criminal case, the rule establishes a more stringent discretionary standard [for admissibility].). Others are skeptical that the difference between the two balancing tests is sufficiently different to draw a practical distinction in the evidentiary showing required for admission of a prior conviction. See Uviller, supra, at 800 (suggesting that the practical possibility of such fine calibration of the danger of prejudice is dubious.). Although the nature of the distinction is elusive, Uviller, supra, at 799, the drafting of the rule suggests that the distinction is intentional. If the drafters had wanted to apply the same evidentiary test to all prior convictions, they could easily have stated a universal rule instead of differentiating between the accused and all other witnesses. We therefore examine closely the two standards to determine the precise nature of their differences. 44 To describe accurately the distinctions in Rule 609(a)(1), however, we must first unravel a linguistic oddity in its language. With respect to a witness other than the accused, the rule provides that a conviction shall be admitted, subject to Rule 403. The instruction that convictions shall be admitted indicates that Rule 609 is a rule of inclusion; any conviction meeting Rule 609's requirements will be admitted. However, the reference to Rule 403 complicates the analysis. That rule, applicable when a party objects to otherwise relevant evidence, provides that evidence may be excluded if its probative value is substantially outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice. Fed.R.Evid. 403. Thus, by its language, Rule 403 is a rule of exclusion. These conflicting formulations of inclusion in rule 609 and exclusion in Rule 403 raise some uncertainty about whether the impeaching party (here Tse, who sought to impeach Williams with his prior conviction) bears the burden of demonstrating the superior probative value of the prior convictions to justify admission of the evidence, or whether the impeached party (here the government, which sought to avoid the impeachment of Williams with his prior conviction) bears the burden of demonstrating the danger of unfair prejudice to justify exclusion of the evidence. See Uviller, supra, at 799-800 (noting this distinction). 45 The advisory committee notes offer some clarification regarding the use of a prior conviction to impeach government witnesses. 12 The notes state that the [Rule 403] balancing test protects ... the government in criminal cases and that [o]nly when the government is able to point to a real danger of prejudice that is sufficient to outweigh substantially the probative value of the conviction for impeachment purposes will the conviction be excluded. Fed.R.Evid. 609 advisory committee's notes on 1990 amendment. Therefore, although the proponent of the admission of the evidence of a prior conviction is the accused who seeks to impeach the government witness, the government bears the burden of protecting its witnesses from such impeachment by demonstrating to the court, pursuant to Rule 403's exclusionary rule, that the probative value of the conviction at issue is substantially outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice, or the other grounds for exclusion noted in Rule 403. 13 46 This standard of prejudice differs from the standard of prejudice applicable to the court's consideration of requests by the government to impeach a defendant with prior convictions. The court may exclude a prior conviction of the accused, offered for the purpose of impeachment, if the prejudicial effect of the conviction merely outweighs its probative value; the court may exclude a conviction of a government witness, offered by the accused for the purpose of impeachment, only if the danger of unfair prejudice from the conviction substantially outweighs its probative value. 47 In addition, Rule 403 protects government witnesses only against the danger of unfair prejudice, while Rule 609 protects the accused against any prejudicial effect. See United States v. Smith, 292 F.3d 90, 99 (1st Cir.2002) (noting that Rule 403 protects only against unfair prejudice rather than all prejudice); United States v. Rodriguez-Estrada, 877 F.2d 153, 156 (1st Cir.1989) ([A]ll evidence is meant to be prejudicial; it is only unfair prejudice which must be avoided.). Usually, courts use the term `unfair prejudice' for evidence that invites the jury to render a verdict on an improper emotional basis. Varoudakis, 233 F.3d at 122; see also United States v. Currier, 836 F.2d 11, 18 (1st Cir.1987) (noting that unfair prejudice is prejudice that causes a jury to base its decision on something other than the established proposition in the case (quoting 1 Weinstein's Evidence § 403[03], 36-39 (1986))). Thus, while a court must weigh all potential prejudicial effect to the defendant when deciding whether to admit a prior conviction of the accused, it must weigh only the kind of prejudice that can be deemed unfair when deciding whether to admit the prior conviction of a government witness. 48 These distinctions — substantially outweighs versus outweighs, and unfair prejudice versus prejudicial effect — support the assertion of the Weinstein treatise that the standard for the admission of prior convictions of the accused is stricter than the standard for the admission of prior convictions of a government witness. These distinctions also recognize that the potential prejudice to the defendant from the admission of prior convictions is simply not the same as the potential prejudice to a government witness. In particular, there is a heightened risk that a jury will use evidence of a prior conviction of the accused to draw an impermissible propensity inference: 49 [I]n virtually every case in which prior convictions are used to impeach the testifying defendant, the defendant faces a unique risk of prejudice — i.e., the danger that convictions that would be excluded under Fed.R.Evid. 404 will be misused by a jury as propensity evidence despite their introduction solely for impeachment purposes. 50 Fed.R.Evid. 609 advisory committee's notes on 1990 amendment. See also Uviller, supra, at 802-803 ([T]he outstanding difference between harm to a defendant and harm to other witnesses is undeniable: A jury might conclude from the testifying defendant's criminal career (despite vociferous instructions from the court to the contrary) that he committed the crime charged because of a demonstrated propensity to engage in criminal conduct. That kind and degree of damage cannot be suffered by the prosecution or its witnesses....). Moreover, revelations of past convictions may inflame the jury. See, e.g., United States v. Beahm, 664 F.2d 414, 419 (4th Cir.1981) (excluding evidence of a prior conviction in part because it was likely to inflame the jury and thus prejudice the defendant). 51 In contrast, the prior convictions of a government witness are unlikely to inflame the jury or invite a propensity inference: 52 The probability that prior convictions of an ordinary government witness will be unduly prejudicial is low in most criminal cases. Since the behavior of the witness is not the issue in dispute in most cases, there is little chance that the trier of fact will misuse the convictions offered as impeachment evidence as propensity evidence. 53 Fed.R.Evid. 609 advisory committee's notes on 1990 amendment. Rather, the prior convictions of government witnesses are more likely to cause unfair prejudice to the government's interest in a fair trial and unnecessary embarrassment to [the] witness. Id. While these are important concerns, see United States v. Orlando-Figueroa, 229 F.3d 33, 46 (1st Cir.2000) (affirming district court's decision to exclude prior crime of government witness involving dishonesty where defense was able to impeach the witness with evidence of more recent dishonest acts), trial courts will be skeptical when the government objects to impeachment of its witnesses with prior convictions. Fed. R.Evid. 609 advisory committee's notes on 1990 amendment. 54 We summarize. With respect to the use of prior convictions for impeachment, Rule 609 distinguishes between the accused and mere witnesses. A court may admit a conviction of the accused only if the probative value outweighs its prejudicial effect to the accused. By contrast, a court shall admit a conviction of a government witness unless that conviction should be excluded under Rule 403. The burden under Rule 403 is on the party opposing admission, who must show that the probative value is substantially outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice.  In this case, in considering the admission of a prior conviction of Tse and a prior conviction of Williams, the government's principal witness, the district court appeared to apply a uniform standard of exclusion. If so, the failure to apply the different standards for exclusion was an error of law. 14 55 However, any such error was harmless. [A] non-constitutional evidentiary error will be treated as harmless if it is highly probable that the error did not contribute to the verdict. United States v. Rose, 104 F.3d 1408, 1414 (1st Cir.1997). The government bears the burden of persuasion to show that the error is harmless. Id. In conducting a harmless error analysis, the court `must mull the ruling in context, giving due weight to the totality of the circumstances' and avoid `unnecessarily interven[ing] in a process that — although imperfect — adequately protected defendant's rights.' United States v. Wilkerson, 251 F.3d 273, 280 (1st Cir.2001) (citations omitted). 56 The excluded evidence of Williams's prior conviction was unmistakably cumulative. Id.; see also Rose, 104 F.3d at 1414. The jury heard evidence that Williams had been convicted of at least one crime; that he had made false statements to the grand jury and on a job application; 15 that he had been paid a significant sum for his work as a DEA informant and had bought a new car soon after the November transaction; that he had not reported his earnings from the DEA on his tax return, despite having been told to do so; and finally, that he had dealt and used illicit drugs in the past. The jury had ample reason to closely scrutinize Williams's credibility in this case. It is highly probable that any error in excluding Williams's ABPO conviction had no impact on the verdict.