Court Opinion

ID: 9663450
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 23:39:28.091536+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:14:50.296309
License: Public Domain

HENDERSON, Justice
(concurring in result).
I cannot quarrel with the sufficiency of the evidence herein and write specially to express my fear that down that long, legal road, a case might arise which will trigger a careful review of language set forth in Issue 2. Under SDCL 19-14-13, as I understand it, the majority opinion is holding that a trial court can technically reject the use of an old conviction for impeachment where the probative value outweighs its prejudicial effect. However, in my opinion, it is preferable that a balancing be reflected upon the record. Obviously, a fif*585teen-year-old conviction is stale. Down that long, winding legal road, which stretches into decades, with different Justices and different trial judges aboard, the •law still reaching out for strength and viability, a set of facts might well arise where the conviction is not so stale and the conviction enters the enigmatic evidentiary state of the penumbra. Then, the balancing, so delicate, must surface for the appellate court to review. Without the balancing on the record, those venerable men who sit on this High Court in the future are left without a record upon which to employ their powers of deduction.