Court Opinion

ID: 9718960
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 07:38:55.624002+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:24:03.747354
License: Public Domain

Armentano, J.
(dissenting). I dissent because I do not agree that the trial court abused its discretion in denying the defendant’s motion to exclude evidence of his prior conviction. This court has on many occasions stated that it will not disturb a trial court’s ruling on a motion to exclude evidence of a prior conviction “unless it could not have reasonably concluded as it did, because we make every reasonable presumption in favor of its correctness.” State v. Miller, 186 Conn. 654, 671, 443 A.2d 906 (1982); see State v. Shaw, 185 Conn. 372, 384, 441 A.2d 561 (1981); State v. Jones, 167 Conn. 228, 237, 355 A.2d 95 (1974); State v. Bitting, 162 Conn. 1, 11, 291 A.2d 240 (1971). Although the crime charged and the prior conviction in the present case are more similar than those at issue in State v. Nardini, 187 Conn. 513, 447 A.2d 396 (1982), and the conviction less remote in time, I am not convinced that the prejudicial impact of the conviction outweighed its probative value as a matter of law. Moreover, the speculation that the defendant’s failure to take the stand “may have been *336induced at least in part by the fear that his former conviction would come to the attention of the jury” is a factor which relates to the harmfulness of the ruling, and not to the prejudicial impact of the prior conviction which the trial court properly weighed in making that ruling. Accordingly, I do not agree that the defendant is entitled to a new trial.