Commonwealth v. Randall

The majority today purports to “revise” the salutary standards announced in Commonwealth v. Bighum, 452 Pa. 554, 307 A.2d 255 (1973), and Commonwealth v. Roots, 482 Pa. 33, 393 A.2d 364 (1978), governing the admissibility of a criminal defendant’s prior convictions as impeachment evidence, “in favor of more concrete guidelines.” At 414. In reality the majority sweeps aside a variety of evidentiary considerations heretofore regarded as crucial to a determination of admissibility, substituting in their place a per se rule based on a single arbitrary factor, i.e., whether the *416prior conviction or…