Court Opinion

ID: 9711521
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 04:33:40.171302+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:05.663899
License: Public Domain

Wilner, J.,

concurring:

I concur entirely with the Opinion authored by Judge Weant and indeed join it. I file this separate concurring Opinion to emphasize that which I could only suggest in the Appendix to Burrell v. State, 42 Md. App. 130, 147, et seq. (1979); namely, that in using an infamous — non-infamous criterion to determine the admissibility of prior convictions to impeach the credibility of a testifying defendant, Maryland is completely out of step with modern day thinking and with most of the rest of the country.
As Judge Weant noted, we are indeed uncomfortable with the notion that a 25-year old sodomy conviction, standing alone, would be admissible for the presumed purpose of impeaching a defendant’s credibility. Yet, by statute (Courts article, § 10-905) and judicial determination (see Cousins v. State, 230 Md. 2 (1962)), that is permissible in this State. It ought not to be.
The law engages in many fictions; some are harmless, some are helpful or even necessary. This one is neither. It simply defies reason to theorize that a person may not be a truthful witness because 25 years ago he was convicted of *212sodomy, especially when we have no idea of the facts upon which the conviction was based. Such a conclusion — even if one accepts the underlying premise that there is some relationship between the disposition to commit such a crime and the disposition to be untruthful — flies in the face of the one basic principle accepted by nearly every discipline in our society, that people can change.
Certain types of past criminal behavior, if exhibited in the relatively recent past, can very well and legitimately influence a jury’s perception of one’s present credibility. But there has to be some balance, and the balance should not be struck on the basis of whether the crime was infamous or not infamous. It seems to me that, aside perhaps from actual peijury, no crime should be presumed capable of casting permanent doubt on a person’s credibility. Unless a prior conviction can be shown to be part of a general and persistent pattern of criminal conduct, where the pattern itself may be indicative of untruthfulness, I think that some form of statute of limitation ought to be imposed on the use of prior convictions for impeachment purposes.
I hope that the Court of Appeals or the General Assembly will take another look at this issue in light of plain reality and what Congress and other States have done.