Also known as: amnesty · pardon
Written by attorneys · grounded in primary & secondary sources — see below
An official act of pardon, annulment, certificate of rehabilitation, or equivalent procedure that places an offense into a state of being forgotten or disregarded for legal purposes such as impeachment.
Odessa Okada completed a court-supervised ethics program after her fraud conviction. A judge then issued a certificate declaring her rehabilitated and vacated the conviction. When the opposing party tried to use the old conviction to attack her credibility at trial, the court held that the rehabilitation order had placed the conviction in oblivion under the evidence rules.
Oskar Ocampo received a gubernatorial pardon after new laboratory evidence proved he had not committed the charged offense. The pardon order expressly found innocence. At a later civil trial the opponent sought to impeach him with the conviction, but the court ruled the pardon had consigned the conviction to oblivion.
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After his state conviction was annulled following completion of a supervised release program, Alan Alvarez faced a federal perjury charge. The prosecutor attempted to introduce the annulled conviction to impeach Alvarez. The court excluded it, ruling the annulment had placed the conviction in oblivion under Rule 609(c).
Belinda Bates obtained a certificate of rehabilitation after serving her sentence for embezzlement. At a subsequent contract dispute the defendant sought to impeach her with the old conviction. The court held the certificate placed the conviction in oblivion and barred its admission.
Carlton Crane received a presidential pardon based on rehabilitation after a tax fraud conviction. Years later in a civil suit his opponent tried to use the conviction for impeachment. The court ruled the pardon had placed the conviction in oblivion and sustained the objection.
Dana Delgado completed an equivalent state procedure resulting in vacation of her theft conviction on rehabilitation grounds. In a later defamation action the defendant offered the conviction to attack credibility. The court excluded it, finding the procedure placed the conviction in oblivion under the evidence rule.
A conviction is placed in oblivion when it has been the subject of a pardon, annulment, certificate of rehabilitation, or equivalent procedure based on a finding of rehabilitation or innocence, provided the person has no later serious conviction. The rule treats the conviction as no longer probative of present character for truthfulness once such an official determination has been made.
Yes. The protection is lost if the person is later convicted of a crime punishable by death or imprisonment for more than one year. The subsequent conviction shows that the earlier rehabilitation finding no longer reliably indicates present character for truthfulness.
No. Courts focus on whether the procedure included an express finding of rehabilitation or innocence, not on whether the order parroted the exact wording of the evidence rule. Substance controls over form.
…were not made in the heat of passion, id. , at 14, and that they were not "extracted from [him] upon any hopes or promise of Pardon," id. , at 29. It is not plausible that the Framers' only objection to the trial was that Raleigh's judges did not properly weigh these factors before sentencing him to death. Rather, the…