165 A. 809 | Md. | 1933
An action at law to recover the damages resulting from the collision of two automobiles while being driven on the public highway was begun by the owner of one of the automobiles and his assurer against the owner and the driver of the other automobile. The trial of the case resulted in a verdict and judgment for the defendants. The plaintiffs have appealed, and the single ground upon which a reversal is asked is presented by an exception to the court's ruling on the evidence. The defendant driver was under cross-examination, and had stated that he had been driving carefully, but that he and the owner of the other automobile had both been charged with reckless driving and had immediately been taken before a justice of the peace, who had tried the case at once. At this point the plaintiffs offered to prove by the witness that the latter had been found guilty of this charge by the justice of the peace and that he had been fined two dollars and costs. The error assigned is the refusal to admit this testimony. The driver of each automobile attributed the cause of the accident to the negligent or reckless driving of the other, and which one was at fault so as to have been the direct cause of the accident was the issue for the jury to determine from all the testimony on the subject. Dwyer v. Chew,
Subject to the limitation that there had been a conviction[1] that was not too remote,[2] the credibility of a witness had freely been allowed to be impeached by proof of a former conviction of crime, without reference to its nature,[3] until the case of Nelson v. Seiler (1927),
[1] Bonaparte v. Thayer (1902),
[2] Simond v. State (1915),
[3] Smith v. State (1885),
The comparatively recent multiplication of penal laws to enforce ordinances and statutes enacted under the police power gave rise to a large class of offenses whose commission indicated neither moral turpitude, a lawless disposition, nor untruthfulness. The problem is illustrated and its solution stated in Nelson v. Seiler, supra, where the opinion for the court was written by Chief Judge Bond. It is there said: "To admit as possible evidence of a witness' unworthiness of belief the fact that he has been convicted of driving over a stop signal, or making a left-hand turn where it is not permitted, would be unreasonable. Criminal law and criminal procedure are made use of for the enforcement of a large volume of mere regulations of convenience and order, wholly without relation to any moral qualities; and while it may have been less apparent in times past, it is now, at least, unescapable that some discrimination must be made when the courts come to receive evidence of violations to impeach the credibility of a witness. It is not required that the evidence be restricted to infamous crimes or those involving moral turpitude on the one hand, but, on the other, the purpose of the admission, to impeach credibility, must impose some limits. The convictions should be of infringements of the law that may have some tendency to impeach credibility, and not all infringements do. No rigid classification seems possible. The principle generally adopted by courts which *4
follow otherwise the practice followed in Maryland is that the trial court must exercise discretion when offers of convictions are made, looking to the purpose for which the evidence is offered, and that its decision will not be interfered with on appeal, except when the evidence is so clearly irrelevant that its admission could not be said to be within the discretion lodged with the trial court. 2 Wigmore, Evidence (2nd Ed.), sec. 983. Third Great Western Co. v. Loomis,
These decisions are conclusive that the credibility of the witness could not be impeached on cross-examination by evidence of his prior conviction for reckless driving of an automobile on a public highway, unless by reason of the circumstances that in these cases the criminal act of which the party had been convicted had occurred before the accrual of the subject-matter of the trial, whereas in the case at bar the conviction may have been for the reckless driving out of which the pending alleged cause of action arose. It is not perceived how the time of the conviction of crime is generally material or relevant in the determination of the admissibility of the fact of a conviction of crime before the trial at which the witness is so sought to be impeached, because it is the nature of the crime in relation to the credit of the witness that is decisive of its admissibility, and the element of time merely goes to the present weight to be given to the conviction, unless the length of time since the conviction is, in connection with the nature of the crime, so great as to make *5
the fact of no probative value. Simond v. State,
It was at the close of the trial of the civil case, after all the parties, with their witnesses, had given their versions of *6 the circumstances under which the automobiles had collided, that the defendant driver was asked if he had not been convicted of reckless driving at the time of the accident. The admission of this testimony was, under the prevailing doctrine, in the sound discretion of the judge before whom the case was on trial. He considered the problem, and being, as he clearly indicated, of the opinion that finding the defendant guilty of reckless driving involved no implication of an absence of credibility, but tended to confuse the jury on an issue of negligence vel non that was then peculiarly the function of the jury on a full presentation of all the facts, the court declined to let the question be asked. In this ruling no reversible error is found. The offense of reckless driving includes many acts in the control and operation of an automobile which could have no bearing on the credibility of the witness, and nothing is here disclosed which would tend to take the offer in the instant case out of the general rule.
It is urged, however, by the plaintiffs, that the fact of conviction of that defendant on the charge of reckless driving, in connection with the happening of the accident of which the plaintiffs complain, was admissible as evidence of the culpable negligence of such defendant, entitling the plaintiffs to recover. It was held in Gambrill v. Schooley,
Judgment affirmed, with costs. *8