## Facts

- Emery Duane Gust and Dennie G. Dighera brought a diversity tort action in federal court arising out of a motor-vehicle collision involving a truck driven by Jeffrey S. Jones, who was acting in the course and scope of his work for Willis Shaw Frozen Food Express, Inc.
- Gust claimed personal injuries and related damages from the crash and was expected to testify at trial about the accident and the effects of his injuries.
- Before trial, defendants sought permission to introduce evidence that Gust previously had been convicted of a felony for smuggling drugs into a penal institution.
- Defendants offered the conviction only for impeachment—arguing it should be admitted to attack Gust’s credibility as a witness.
- Gust filed a motion in limine asking the court to exclude any reference to the conviction at trial.

## Issues

1. In this civil personal-injury action, may defendants impeach plaintiff-witness Gust with his prior felony conviction for smuggling drugs into a penal institution under Federal Rule of Evidence 609(a)(1), or should the conviction be excluded under Rule 403?

## Decision

- The court granted Gust’s motion in limine.
- The court excluded evidence of Gust’s prior drug-smuggling felony conviction for impeachment at trial.
- The court determined that any probative value the conviction had on credibility was substantially outweighed by the risk of unfair prejudice and distraction from the issues to be tried.

## Legal Principles

- Under Fed. R. Evid. 609(a)(1), impeachment of a witness (other than a criminal defendant) with a felony conviction is permitted only to the extent the evidence is not excluded by Fed. R. Evid. 403.
- In applying Rule 403 to impeachment by conviction, courts weigh the conviction’s value for assessing veracity against countervailing dangers such as unfair prejudice, confusion, and undue delay.
- Felonies that do not involve deceit or false statements generally have less probative value on truthfulness than crimes that directly reflect a tendency to lie.
- In a civil negligence trial, evidence that a party has a drug-related felony can carry a substantial risk that jurors will misuse it as character evidence or treat it as a reason to discount the party’s claim for reasons unrelated to the accident.
- Trial courts have discretion to exclude conviction evidence when its likely effect is to inject a collateral, inflammatory matter that may divert the jury from deciding liability and damages based on the crash evidence.

## Conclusion

In *Dighera v. Jones*, the district court resolved a pretrial evidentiary dispute by granting Gust’s motion in limine and barring defendants from impeaching him with a prior felony conviction for smuggling drugs into a penal institution, concluding that the conviction’s limited value for credibility was substantially outweighed by unfair prejudice under Rule 403 as applied through Rule 609(a)(1).


Dighera v. Jones, 1996 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 16375 (1996)