Impeachment of Defendant by Unspecified Felony is Okay, Overruling Court of Appeals

State v. Hill, Minn.S.Ct., 8/24/2011.  Mr. Hill is serving a life sentence without possibility of parole for the first degree premeditated murder Jeffrey Logan.  The jury also convicted him of two other murder counts and of aggravated robbery.  The facts aren’t terribly important to the three errors that Mr. Hill argued to the supreme court.

Mr. Hill testified in his own defense, setting up a self defense claim to the shooting.  His testimony lead the trial judge to permit the state to impeach him with his Illinois conviction of simple robbery.  The catch was, however, the trial judge would not permit the state to name the conviction; this was to militate the similarity between this conviction and the aggravated robbery count.  Such similarity is one of the factors that a trial court is instructed to consider in exercising its discretion to admit impeachment by prior conviction evidence.  State v. Jones, 271 N.W.2d 534 (Minn. 1978).  The supreme court now adopts this evidentiary sleigh of hand, joining what appears to be a majority of jurisdictions that have considered the question.  The adoption of this rule also overrules a contrary opinion from the court of appeals, State v. Utter, 773 N.W.2d 127 (Minn.Ct.App. 2009).

Rule 609(a) of the rules of evidence require that the trial court determine that the probative value of admitting the prior conviction outweighs its prejudicial effect when the prior conviction does not involve either dishonesty or a false statement.  The trial court can now essentially read that requirement out of the rule by limiting the evidence to conviction of an unspecified crime.  This ruling will likely increase the frequency with which trial courts permit such impeachment; and it would also increase the number of such convictions that are allowed:  unspecified “convictions”.