Court Opinion

ID: 9458277
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 20:47:05.635493+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:35:41.834834
License: Public Domain

KILEY, Circuit Judge
(concurring).
I concur in the majority opinion. The facts detailed by Judge Castle leave me with no reasonable doubt that the evidence at the trial identifies the defendant as the robber of the bank.
I think, however, that the district court erred in permitting the impeachment of defendant by the use of his two prior convictions. Neither prior conviction is of the class of crimen falsi. In my view, judicial approval of the use of non -crimen falsi prior convictions for impeachment invites abuse of the process through use of the prior convictions not for the purpose of affecting a defendant’s credibility, but effectually for the purpose of rebutting the presumption of innocence and insinuating into the trial the notion that a defendant is probably guilty of the offense charged because he committed the earlier offenses. I have consistently taken this position. See United States v. Escobedo, 430 F.2d 14, 21 (7th Cir. 1970); United States v. Gornick, 448 F.2d 566, 573-574 (7th Cir. 1971); United States v. Dow (7th Cir. 1972).
*48But in my view of the amplitude of the identifying testimony, I think the error is harmless.
I agree with Judge Castle that on the record before us the district court did not commit reversible error in permitting the jury to continue deliberating after midnight until 4:00 a. m. I think, however, that trial judges take the risk of committing reversible error where, except in the extraordinary case, deliberations are continued after midnight, with the probability that jurors, because of fatigue, agree to a verdict which they would otherwise not have agreed to.