Keeping It Real: Reforming the “Untried Conviction” Impeachment Rule

There is a growing call for a "New Legal Realism," that, among other things, takes a "bottom-up" approach to studying the effects of rules of law on the people to whom they actually apply on a day-to-day basis.The New Legal Realism movement spans across various fields and disciplines related to law.The movement is particularly evident in the area of criminal law where there is an increasing effort to ensure reliability and accuracy in the system's results.The recent move of some states to require racial impact statements for pending legislation as well as the advocacy and findings of the innocence movement exemplify this effort.Even more compelling are the recent lawsuits filed by public defenders in several states, citing their inability to represent their clients in a constitutionally effective manner and demanding to have their caseloads reduced until they can be adequately funded.This Article aids in the effort to improve our justice system's reliability, taking a New Legal Realist approach to the area of evidence law as applied in the criminal setting.I explore the interrelationship between plea bargaining and the use of prior convictions to impeach criminal defendants at trial, two