Beales v. State

• Decision Date: 01 September 1992
• Docket Number: No. 64,64
• Citation: 329 Md. 263,619 A.2d 105
• Parties: William Lee BEALES v. STATE of Maryland. ,
• Court: Maryland Court of Appeals

Page 263

329 Md. 263

619 A.2d 105

William Lee BEALES v. STATE of Maryland.

No. 64, Sept. Term, 1992.

Court of Appeals of Maryland.

Feb. 5, 1993.

Martha G. Weisheit, Asst. Public Defender (Stephen E. Harris, Public Defender, both on brief) Baltimore, for appellant.

Mary Ann Ince, Asst. Atty. Gen. (J. Joseph Curran, Jr., Atty. Gen., both on brief) Baltimore, for appellee.

Argued before MURPHY, C.J., and ELDRIDGE, RODOWSKY, McAULIFFE, CHASANOW, KARWACKI and ROBERT M. BELL, JJ.

MURPHY, Chief Judge.

Maryland Rule 1-502 governing the impeachment of witnesses by evidence of a prior criminal conviction took effect January 1, 1992. It provides in pertinent part:

"(a) Generally.--For the purpose of attacking the credibility of a witness, evidence that the witness has been convicted of a crime shall be admitted if elicited from the witness or established by public record during cross-examination, but only if the crime was an infamous crime or other crime relevant to the witness's credibility and the court determines that the probative value of admitting this evidence outweighs the danger of unfair prejudice to the witness or the objecting party.

"(b) Time Limit.--Evidence of a conviction under this Rule is not admissible if a period of more than 15 years has elapsed since the date of the conviction."

The instant question is whether the trial court erred in admitting, as impeachment evidence, the theft conviction of a defense witness testifying at the appellant Beales's trial. More specifically, we must decide whether the conviction was admissible per se, or whether the rule required that the trial court first balance the conviction's probative value against its potential for unfair prejudice to the accused.

I

Beales was tried before a jury in the Circuit Court for Baltimore City on charges of battery and carrying a deadly weapon with intent to injure. ¹ The State's principal witness, Sandra Herbert, testified that on the evening of September 3, 1990, while walking on the street with her companion, Tony Pevia, they were approached by Beales and two other men. She stated that Beales uttered a racial epithet, and thereafter stabbed her beneath the shoulder with a small knife. Herbert added that Beales then struggled with Pevia before running away. Officer Herman Janitzky testified that when he responded to the scene, he found Herbert bleeding from a half-inch puncture wound in the shoulder. Janitzky acknowledged that no knife was found either at the scene or in Beales's possession when he was arrested about ten minutes later.

Tina McGee, Beales's girlfriend, and Joseph Lambert, one of the two men accompanying him on the street, testified for the defense that they observed the altercation. They stated that Pevia initiated the struggle by attacking Beales, who passively shielded himself from the other man's punches while Herbert stood off to one side. Both defense witnesses stated that Beales did not have a knife during the incident.

Towards the end of the State's cross-examination of Lambert, the prosecutor asked him whether he had ever been convicted of a crime of dishonesty. Defense counsel's objection to the question was overruled, and the witness admitted that he had once been convicted of theft. At the ensuing bench conference, defense counsel said to the court:

"(A)s I understand the new rule [1-502] regarding the impeaching of a witness on prior convictions, my understanding is that the Court has to make some kind of determination, even crimes involving an element of dishonesty are not automatically impeachable anymore. The Court has to make a preliminary determination of whether the appropriate value of the evidence is outweighed by the prejudice or something, but there must be some preliminary determination regarding that conviction before Counsel can elicit those questions."

The prosecutor described defense counsel's view of Rule 1-502 as "hogwash," adding: "[T]he only thing that rule did was change that you could not do felony drugs anymore, that's the only thing. You can always attack bias."

The court's response and the subsequent testimony we set forth verbatim:

"THE COURT: "[T]his is a question of credibility. He's got a right to test his credibility and this is an appropriate question. Under the new rule, as amended, or under the prior rule, he asked the question properly. He has a right to put that information and the answer before the Jury. Overruled.

THE COURT: You may answer the question.

BY [the prosecutor]:

Q When was that, sir, when you were convicted of theft?

A I can't remember that. I don't know.

Q You don't remember?

A No. That's been, when I was about twenty years old and I'm thirty-four now.

Q Is that your only conviction of theft?

A Yes."

Beales was convicted of battery and sentenced to three years in prison. He appealed to the Court of Special Appeals, contending that the trial court erred when it refused to employ the balancing test required by Rule 1-502 before it admitted Lambert's theft conviction into evidence. We granted certiorari, prior to a determination by the intermediate appellate court, to consider the important issue raised in this case.

II

Before the advent of Rule 1-502, the law of impeachment by prior convictions was governed by Maryland Code (1973, 1989 Repl.Vol.) § 10-905(a) of the Courts and Judicial Proceedings Article, which provided in pertinent part: "Evidence is admissible to prove the interest of a witness ... or the fact of his conviction of an infamous crime." This Court's cases, notably our impeachment trilogy, explicate the statute. See Prout v. State, 311 Md. 348, 535 A.2d 445 (1988); Watson v. State, 311 Md. 370, 535 A.2d 455 (1988); and Wicks v. State, 311 Md. 376, 535 A.2d 459 (1988). Under the former law, a conviction of an infamous crime, i.e., one of the common-law felonies or one of the crimen falsi, was admissible per se for impeachment purposes. Prout, supra, 311 Md. at 360, 535 A.2d 445. The admissibility of convictions for other, lesser crimes bearing on a witness's credibility was left to the discretion of the trial court. Id. at 363, 535 A.2d 445. Convictions for non-infamous crimes which do not bear upon the witness's propensity to be truthful under oath were not admissible. Id.

As used in Rule 1-502, the concept of an infamous crime retains its traditional meaning. Crimes historically classified as crimen falsi include crimes in the nature of perjury, false statement, criminal fraud, embezzlement, false pretense, or any other offense involving some element of deceitfulness, untruthfulness, or falsification bearing on the witness's propensity to testify truthfully. Wicks, supra, 311 Md. at 382, 535 A.2d 459. As it is the embodiment of deceitfulness, theft is among the crimen falsi. See id. at 382-383, 535 A.2d 459; Horne v. State, 321 Md. 547, 556, 583 A.2d 726 (1991). Therefore, Lambert's prior conviction of theft qualifies as one of the crimen falsi embraced within the larger category of infamous crimes.

The dispositive issue before us thus turns on the extent to which the rule requires the trial court to weigh the probative value of a conviction in regard to a witness's credibility against the prejudicial effect of such evidence. The State argues that Rule 1-502(a) requires automatic admission of evidence of conviction when an infamous crime is used to impeach, and that the discretionary balancing test of probativeness and prejudice is reserved only for other crimes relevant to credibility. In this regard, the State relies upon that principle of statutory construction pursuant to which a qualifying clause ordinarily is confined to the immediately preceding words or phrase, especially absent a comma before the qualifying language. Sullivan v. Dixon, 280 Md. 444, 451, 373 A.2d 1245 (1977). By such a construction, the language requiring the court to perform a preliminary balancing test would apply only to the immediately preceding words, i.e., "or other crime relevant to the witness's credibility," but not to an infamous crime. The State also asserts more broadly that the rule should be interpreted in a manner consistent with prior law governing impeachment, where evidence of a conviction for an infamous crime was automatically admissible on a per se basis. See Horne, supra, 321 Md. at 556, 583 A.2d 726; Wicks, supra, 311 Md. at 383, 535 A.2d at 459; Prout, supra, 311 Md. at 360, 535 A.2d 445.

We share Beales's view, however, that the new rule now requires a preliminary determination of probativeness and potentially unfair prejudice for all convictions used to impeach credibility. Both its plain language and the legislative history underlying its adoption dispel any doubt as to the operation of Rule 1-502(a).

Our cases hold that the canons and principles of construing statutes apply equally to the interpretation of this Court's rules. State v. Romulus, 315 Md. 526, 533, 555 A.2d 494 (1989); accord In re Leslie M., 305 Md. 477, 481, 505 A.2d 504 (1986). It is well settled that in construing a statute or rule to ascertain and effectuate its goal, our first recourse is to the words of the rule, giving them their ordinary and natural import. NCR Corp. v. Comptroller, 313 Md. 118, 124, 544 A.2d 764 (1988); Comptroller v. Fairchild Industries, 303 Md. 280, 284, 493 A.2d 341 (1985). Here, we understand the phrase in Rule 1-502(a) "but only if the crime was an infamous crime or other crime relevant to the witness's credibility" to function as a single, integral component of that rule. The language flows most naturally when read without a pause; and we also observe that there is no comma before the word "or" that might otherwise dictate one treatment for infamous crimes and a different treatment for other crimes. As such, the qualifying language that spells out the requisite balancing of probative value versus danger of unfair prejudice naturally modifies the entire component that precedes it. The balancing test applies...