Court Opinion

ID: 9452734
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 17:50:04.479976+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:33:20.134831
License: Public Domain

GODBOLD, Circuit Judge
(specially concurring):
If we were writing on a new slate I could not join in affirmance. Reluctantly I do so because the matter has been settled by the Supreme Court in Spencer v. State of Texas. In my view the dissenters in Spencer are correct. In time our jurisprudence will come to recognize *282that the prejudicial effect of evidence of prior convictions must, for all purposes, be tempered by inquiry into whether alternative and non-prejudicial means are available to achieve the same evidentiary purpose. Curative instructions to the jury may be the only available tool if the evidentiary purpose cannot be attained by any reasonable alternative. If there is an available and reasonable alternative this “unmitigated fiction"1 is not enough to satisfy constitutional standards.

. “The naive assumption that prejudicial effects can be overcome by instructions to the jury, * * * all practicing lawyers know to be unmitigated fiction.” Krulewitch v. United States, 336 U.S. 440, 453, 69 S.Ct. 716, 723, 93 L.Ed. 790, 799 (1949) (Mr. Justice Jackson, concurring) .