Rogers v. United States

BELSON, Associate Judge:

This appeal presents the questions, first, whether a reputation witness may testify to “negative evidence” of a defendant’s reputation, and second, whether the government may impeach a reputation witness by reference to the defendant’s juvenile arrests. We hold that negative evidence of reputation is admissible but that, in this case, the trial court’s exclusion of such testimony was harmless error. We also hold that the trial court properly allowed the government to test a witness’ knowledge of appellant’s reputation by asking whether the witness had heard that…