Court Opinion

ID: 9517991
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 00:39:43.39284+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:26:41.062722
License: Public Domain

HUDOCK, Judge,
concurring:
I concur in the result. Since the issue of bolstering the credibility of a criminal defendant by use of reputation evidence arises in the context of an ineffectiveness of counsel claim, and since the precedent in Pennsylvania to support the introduction of such evidence is unclear, at best, counsel cannot be faulted for not proffering this evidence.
In the proper context, however, I would have no difficulty allowing the use of such reputation evidence. Where, as here, a defendant who testifies is subjected to cross-examination and argument which directly attacks his veracity, as opposed to his recollection, powers of observation, etc., I would permit him to introduce reputation evidence of truthfulness and veracity. In the prosecutor’s opening statement, he stated:
I’m going to give you a quote from Shakespeare which goes: Oh what a tangled web we weave when others we try to deceive ... What the defendant told the detective could not have occurred, (emphasis added)
*155(N.T. 7/11/89, p. 26) Certainly this is a direct attack on Appellant’s veracity.
While it may be true, as the majority asserts, that no appellate court decision in this Commonwealth has thus far allowed evidence of a witnesses’ good reputation for truth and veracity following an attack of this nature, I would not find that a bar to so hold in an appropriate case. It seems to me peculiar that when a defendant’s credibility must be judged by a jury of twelve strangers, they are not permitted to learn what those who know him best know.
Federal Rule of Evidence 608 provides that the credibility of a witness may be attacked or supported by evidence in the form of opinion or reputation when the character of the witness for truthfulness has been attacked “by opinion or reputation evidence or otherwise.” (emphasis added) The phrase “or otherwise” presumably would include attacks on a defendant’s veracity by scathing cross-examination or by the type of argument made by the prosecutor in this case. Section 608(a) of the proposed Pennsylvania Code of Evidence, Senate Bill No. 176, Session of 1993, contains an identical provision, and thus may resolve the question for the future.