Court Opinion

ID: 9644220
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 20:50:25.595048+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:11:10.009202
License: Public Domain

*393SPAETH, Judge,
dissenting:
I disagree with the majority’s conclusion that the trial judge complied with Commonwealth v. Bighum, 452 Pa. 554, 307 A.2d 255 (1973).
As the judge himself says in his opinion (at p. 6a): “At the time of the objection in the within matter, the Trial Court ruled that burglary was a crime involving dishonesty and could, therefore, be used to impeach a criminal defendant’s testimony.” Defense counsel responded that under Bighum this ruling was not enough; the court should go further and examine “the need, number one, of attempting to impeach the defendant’s testimony and credibility as well as several other things.”
Counsel was correct. Bighum requires the trial judge to make a sequential decision: first, whether the prior conviction was for a crime involving dishonesty; and second, if it was, whether even so the prosecution should not be allowed to prove it. In Bighum’ the Supreme Court held:
Rather than make the admissibility of such evidence turn solely on the nature of the specific conviction, we agree with the approach advocated in Luck [v. United States, 121 U.S.App.D.C. 151, 348 F.2d 763 (1965)]. Some of the considerations mentioned in Luck were: the age and nature of the prior crime; the length of the criminal record; the age and circumstances of the defendant; the extent to which it is more important to the search for truth in a particular case for the jury to hear the defendant’s story than to know of a prior conviction.
452 Pa. at 567, 307 A.2d at 263.
The question presented in this case, therefore, is this: Should the trial judge engage in the Bighum balancing evaluation before the defendant takes the stand, or may he say to defense counsel, as the judge did here, that he will defer that evaluation until the defendant takes the stand? The majority answers this question by saying that evaluation may be deferred. We have already ruled in Commonwealth v. Moc j, 246 Pa.Super. 163, 369 A.2d 862 (J. *3941028/76, filed Feb. 18, 1977) (PRICE, J., concurred in the result; WATKINS, President Judge, and VAN der VOORT, J., noted dissent), that it should not be deferred. There the defendant’s counsel requested the trial judge to rule that'the Commonwealth would not be allowed to prove two prior convictions. The judge refused to rule but told counsel that he was “inclined to allow” proof of convictions. “This indication,” we held, “was the equivalent of a ruling on the issue,” adding in a footnote that “[t]he lower court’s procedure undercut the holding of Bighum by forcing appellant to admit the conviction on direct examination in order to limit its prejudicial impact.” Id. 246 Pa.Super. at 169 n.5, 369 A.2d at 865 n.5.
Further authority for the proposition that the trial judge should engage in the Bighum balancing evaluation before the defendant takes (or decides not to take) the stand appears in Gordon v. United States, 127 U.S.App.D.C. 343, 383 F.2d 936 (1967), cert. denied 390 U.S. 1029, 88 S.Ct. 1421, 20 L.Ed.2d 287 (1968), where the court that decided Luck stated:
[I]n many cases the best way for the District Judge to evaluate the situation is to have the accused take the stand in a non-jury hearing and elicit his testimony and allow cross-examination before resolving the Luck issue. Not only the trial judge, but both counsel, would then be in a better position to make decisions concerning the impeachment issue.
Id. at 941.
Here the trial judge, contrary to the majority’s opinion, never engaged in the Bighum balancing evaluation. As a result, defense counsel was forced to decide not to call his client.1 Since counsel should not have been forced to decide whether to call his client until after the court had engaged *395in the Bighum balancing evaluation, I would award a new trial.
HOFFMAN, J., joins in this opinion.

. As noted, in Commonwealth v. Moore, supra, counsel’s decision was different: he called his client, and had him admit the prior conviction. This difference is immaterial; the point is that both in Moore and here counsel was obliged to decide whether to call his client before the trial judge engaged in the Bighum balancing evaluation.