Impeachment of a Civil Litigant with Criminal Convictions

About 1 in 10 adult men in Florida have a criminal record. Most lawyers don’t check if people involved in a lawsuit have a criminal past, even though it could affect their credibility in court. Knowing about someone’s criminal history can be useful in both personal injury and business cases. You can use the internet to look up someone’s criminal record. This is important to do whenever you’re involved in a lawsuit. It’s good to do it quietly so the other party doesn’t know. To find out about someone’s criminal history, a lawyer can request information from law enforcement and correctional agencies in the area where the person lived. They can also ask the person directly using a legal form called an interrogatory. If the person lies about their criminal history, the lawyer can use the information they found as evidence. In Florida, there are rules about when this information can be used in court. When someone is testifying in court, their credibility can be questioned if they have been convicted of a serious crime or a crime involving dishonesty. However, the court can decide not to consider these convictions if they happened a long time ago and are no longer relevant. In one case, a woman was suing a store for an injury, and the store wanted to bring up her past convictions for writing bad checks to show that she was not trustworthy. The court allowed these convictions to be used because they were not too old and showed a pattern of behavior. This is an example of how the court can decide whether past convictions can be used to question a witness’s credibility. To do this, the record of the convictions must be presented as evidence, and the witness can be asked if they have been convicted of a crime and how many times. If a witness admits to a previous conviction, the questioning about it stops. But if the witness denies it, then the lawyer can show a record of the conviction. In a case where someone sued Firestone, the defense lawyer asked the plaintiff about his past convictions. The plaintiff said he had been convicted twice. Later, the defense lawyer asked about a specific fraud conviction, but the plaintiff said it wasn’t true. The court said the defense lawyer shouldn’t have asked about the specific conviction. The witness can try to explain the conviction, but this opens the door for more questioning about it. In a criminal case, previous convictions of a witness can be brought up if the witness has given misleading testimony. In one case, a witness who claimed to have no prior trouble with the law was later found to have a conviction for having sex with a minor. This was allowed to be brought up in court because the witness had misled the jury. In another case, a man was charged with murdering a woman who worked for him as a prostitute. His previous convictions in Germany were also allowed to be used in court, even though they were from a different country. Reichmann, a German citizen, was convicted of murder in Miami after getting lost and asking for directions, and his old criminal convictions were used against him in court. The Supreme Court said it was okay to use these old convictions to show he might not be telling the truth. If you have a client with a criminal record, you can ask potential jurors in jury selection if they can be fair despite knowing about the record. If they say no, you can challenge them from being on the jury. This way, you can get rid of jurors who might be biased against your client before the trial even starts. Three possible defenses to explain a criminal conviction are “expediency,” “justification,” and “born again.” The “expediency” defense means the person pleaded guilty to a lesser crime just to avoid a harsher punishment. The “justification” defense is when the person admits to the crime but says there were good reasons for it, like self-defense. The “born again” defense is when the person admits their guilt but says they’ve changed and are now a better person. In a court case, the defendant’s lawyer made a mistake by bringing up the defendant’s past crime on purpose. They thought it would make the defendant seem more honest, but it didn’t really help. Even though it was a bad move, it’s something that lawyers sometimes do. They hope it will stop the other side from using the same info against them later. So, it’s a risky move, but it can pay off big if it works. This passage includes references to legal sources and organizations, as well as a lawyer at a law firm. The overall message seems to be about sharing information and knowledge within the legal community.

Source: https://www.floridabar.org/the-florida-bar-journal/impeachment-of-a-civil-litigant-with-criminal-convictions/