Court Opinion

ID: 9678756
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 06:31:14.837811+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:17:07.695100
License: Public Domain

Hastings, J.,
concurring.
I am in full agreement with the result reached by the court in this instance. Also, I acknowledge that in this case we were faced with the situation where evidence of only one prior crime had been offered for impeachment purposes, and the author of the majority opinion quite properly limited his discussion to that single issue.
However, to the extent that one may misread this opinion as interpreting Neb. Rev. Stat. § 27-609 (Reissue 1979) to limiting the introduction of but one prior crime for impeachment purposes, I hasten to register my disagreement. No cases seem to have squarely faced this question. However, in Swain v. State, 621 P.2d 1181 (Okla. Crim. 1980), which construed a statute very similar to § 27-609, the court stated that it was not error to have allowed the prosecutor to impeach the defendant with his prior convictions for armed robbery and forgery.
Also, the Court of Appeals in United States v. Rivers, 693 F.2d 52 (8th Cir. 1982), spoke in terms of impeachment by evidence of prior convictions under Rule 609(a) of the Federal Rules of Evidence.
A determination of this question must be postponed to a later date when that issue is squarely presented.
Boslaugh, J., joins in this concurrence.