Court Opinion

ID: 9520593
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 01:44:40.847398+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:46:29.770189
License: Public Domain

DeBRULER, Justice,
dissenting.
The defendant made a motion to bar the use by the prosecution of evidence of his thirty year old conviction for rape and sodomy. In ruling upon this motion the trial court made two distinct determinations which can be paraphrased as follows:
1. This conviction is so old and stale and remote that it does not tend to prove a depraved sexual instinct at the time of the present alleged offense, and is completely irrelevant and inadmissible as proof of any matter which the prosecu*1293tion is called upon to prove to make a prima facie case.
2. This same conviction while old and stale and remote does tend to prove a lack of credibility as a witness at the present time, and is completely relevant and admissible for purpose of impeachment if the defendant testifies in his own defense.
It would appear logical to me that if this old conviction is not probative evidence of appellant's present inclination to put his sexual self-interest before the rights of others, as believed by the trial court and acceded in by the trial prosecutor, then by the same token it can reveal nothing about his inclination to place his self-interest above his duty to others to tell the truth while a witness on the stand. Indeed a persuasive argument can be made that these two threads of relevance, while tenuous in any event, are not of equal strength, and that the first would be more resistive of dissolution through the action of time than the second.
There is reason in the record to believe that the trial court was of the opinion that he had no discretion at all to bar the use of this prior conviction for impeachment. Hall v. State, (1976) 167 Ind.App. 604, 339 N.E.2d 802, cited with approval in Cox v. State, (1981) Ind., 419 N.E2d 1279, would appear to lend support to his opinion. However, the majority declares the law to be otherwise, and I believe rightly so. Indiana Code § 34-1-14-14 renders prior convictions for infamous crimes relevant and admissible for impeachment. The statute however cannot be considered mandatory in the sense that it binds the hands of a sitting judge so as to preclude him from declaring a particular conviction for an infamous crime inadmissible on the basis of individual circumstances. A'judge in the conduct of a particular trial and in execution of his judicial power, must have the authority to screen evidence. He must be the final arbiter of whether there is a rational basis for the admission of a particular piece of evidence in the context of an actual trial even though the Legislature may have declared that type of evidence to be relevant and admissible. To admit evidence against the accused in a eriminal case where the lack of relevancy is demonstrable would be unfair and a denial of due process. To me it is inconceivable that knowledge of a thirty year old conviction for rape, standing alone in the youth of a person, without proof of a continuation of criminal misconduct, furthers the credibility determining goal of the trier of fact one iota. There is more to thirty years of a person's life than simply the lapse of time. Hall, supra; People v. Henneman, (1944) 328 Ill.App. 124, 54 N.E.2d 745.
I would therefore reverse this conviction and order a new trial at which the prosecution would be prohibited from using appellant's prior conviction for impeachment.
PRENTICE, J., concurs.