¶2I respectfully dissent.
¶3Like Judge Shaw in his special concurrence in this case,Snyder v. State, 893 So.2d 471, 480 (Ala.Crim.App. 2001), I too can distinguish this case from Ex parte Minor, 780 So.2d 796 (Ala. 2000). The trial court in this case restricted the jury's discretion in its use of the evidence of Snyder's prior conviction to the determination of the credibility of Snyder's testimony. This distinguished the present case from Minor. However, in Minor, the majority of this Court clearly held that a trial court committed plain error if it failed to instruct the jury that it may not consider the evidence of prior convictions as substantive evidence that the defendant committed the charged offense. This should not change on a case-by-case basis. Regardless of the effectiveness of the instruction on using evidence of prior convictions only to determine credibility, I believe that the trial court must instruct the jury that it cannot use evidence of prior convictions as substantive evidence that the defendant committed *488 the charged offense. Ex parte Minor, supra.
¶5I respectfully dissent. This Court has recognized the grave prejudice evidence of any prior conviction inflicts on a criminal defendant. See, e.g., Cofer v. State, 440 So.2d 1121, 1124 (Ala. 1983). Our case of Ex parte Minor, 780 So.2d 796, 802 (Ala. 2000), categorically recognizes the duty of the trial court to "instruct the jury, sua sponte, that it may not consider the evidence of prior convictions as substantive evidence that the defendant committed the charged offense." The Minor court thoroughly and cogently explains the reasons for this bright-line rule. The Minor holding is not dependent on the particular facts of that case. The trial judge's discretion in formulating jury instructions does not and should not infringe the Minor holding, because no trial judge has the discretion to allow prior convictions introduced for impeachment to be considered as substantive evidence of the defendant's guilt.
¶6In the case now before us, the only limit the trial judge imposed on the consideration of the prior convictions was this instruction: "This testimony is allowed to go to you for one purpose, and that is for your consideration in determining what credibility you will give a witness's testimony from the witness stand in this case." While lawyers and judges, learned in the law, might understand this instruction to prohibit consideration of the prior convictions as substantive evidence of the defendant's guilt, the laypersons on the jury could not realistically be expected to achieve this distinction.
¶7The discrimination required of jurors in their consideration of prior convictions is analogous to the discrimination required of them in their consideration of prior inconsistent statements. That is, prior inconsistent statements can be considered only for their value in impeaching the declarant's in-court testimony, not as substantive evidence of the truth of the matters stated.Varner v. State, 497 So.2d 1135, 1137 (Ala.Crim.App. 1986). Yet even lawyers and judges ignore, forget, or overlook this requirement for discrimination, as the Court of Criminal Appeals itself inadvertently did when it considered prior inconsistent statements as substantive evidence of the truth of the matters stated in the recent case of Johnson v. State, 823 So.2d 1, 40 (Ala.Crim.App. 2001) (Part XII.A. of the opinion). See my dissent in Ex parte Johnson, 823 So.2d 57 (Ala. 2001). A fortiori, jurors not learned in the law will fail to discriminate between consideration for impeachment and consideration as substantive evidence unless they are expressly and positively prohibited from considering the impeaching evidence as substantive evidence of guilt.
¶8The holding of Minor is correct, valid, fair, and necessary. The Court of Criminal Appeals has faithfully followed it. We should affirm.