# Dockery v. State

> Court of Criminal Appeals of Alabama · October 21, 1994 · 659 So. 2d 219

URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9933069

## Case

- **Full name:** Robert Wayne Dockery v. State.
- **Court:** Court of Criminal Appeals of Alabama
- **Decided:** October 21, 1994
- **Citations:** 659 So. 2d 219; 1994 WL 575990
- **Precedential status:** Published
- **Opinion:** Dissent by Bowen
- **Judges:** Bowen, Patterson
- **Cited by:** 5 later opinions in the Frix Law Library

## Citator (automated)

- No negative treatment found by the automated citator. That is not the same as a confirmation that the case is good law; read the citing cases.
- Full citator and citing cases: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9933069

## Opinion text

Mrs. Stasco, a defense witness — not the prosecutor — first brought up the idea of "trust," thereby implying something about the appellant's character: that he could be trusted alone with children. When the witness responded that she knew nothing of the appellant's "messing with" a child, the prosecutor was entitled to impeach the witness by inquiring whether she was aware he had previously been convicted of sexual abuse.
Evidence of the appellant's prior conviction was not, therefore, merely an "attempt to show Dockery's bad character and propensity to commit the crime of sexual abuse," as the majority asserts, but was an attempt to "dispel the 'image' created by the testimony given [by Mrs. Stasco] on behalf of the [appellant]" that he could be trusted with children. 1A Wigmore, Evidence § 58.2 at 1230 n. 7 (Tillers rev. 1983).

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Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9933069. Public record. Not legal advice.