Court Opinion

ID: 9707369
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 02:09:51.882418+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:22:31.848677
License: Public Domain

McCown, J.,
dissenting.
The majority opinion approves the admission of oral testimony by a witness that defendant had been found guilty of other completely separate misdemeanors. The action is justified upon the ground that one of the defenses here was based on a claim of prior harassment by the arresting officer in the misdemeanor cases. The officer was also the intended victim of the assault here. He was also the witness who testified to the prior convictions. Apparently this method of establishing conviction of another crime by oral testimony was approved on the theory that it established the officer’s reasonable cause to believe that the defendant was guilty of the misdemeanors.
As a general rule, evidence of other crimes than that with which the accused is charged is not admissible in a criminal prosecution. See State v. Casados, ante p. 91, 195 N. W. 2d 210. Section 25-1214, R. R. S. 1943, provides: “A witness may be interrogated as to his previous conviction for a felony, but no other proof of such conviction is competent except the record thereof.” Even in the case of a felony, the court is required to instruct that evidence of previous convictions can be considered only as affecting credibility. See Vanderpool v. State, 115 Neb. 94, 211 N. W. 605. NJI No. 14.62 is specifically to that effect. Neither that instruction nor anything similar to it was given here. It seems strange indeed, where a statute requires that proof of a felony conviction is only competent by establishing “the record thereof,” that conviction of a misdemeanor which generally is not even admissible at all may be established by the hearsay testimony of an arresting officer.
While it may be true that the involvement of the misdemeanors was only collateral here, it is impossible to determine that there was no prejudicial error. The majority opinion as to evidence of other convictions *294might be compared to establishing a new medical classification of partial pregnancy which is then declared not to be pregnancy because it is only termed partial. No such assumption should be indulged here.