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Rule 607 Who may impeach?

Article VI. Witnesses

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Rule Text

The credibility of a witness may be attacked by any party, including the party calling the witness.

Plain-English Summary (for reference only — not a substitute for the rule text above)

This summary is not the rule. The rule text controls.

Any lawyer in the case can challenge a witness's credibility, even the lawyer who called that witness to testify. This means if you put someone on the stand and they say something surprising or unhelpful, you're not stuck with their answer. You can point out reasons why the jury shouldn't fully believe what they said.

This rule changed an old idea that used to exist in many courts. In the past, if you called a witness, you were basically saying "trust this person" and couldn't turn around and question their honesty. Tennessee's rule gets rid of that restriction. Sometimes witnesses don't cooperate, change their story, or say something different than expected, and this rule lets the lawyer who called them deal with that problem honestly instead of pretending everything the witness said is solid truth.

Committee Notes

Advisory Commission Comments.

The rule would abolish Tennessee's common law prohibition against impeaching one's own witness —the voucher rule. The present rule finds expression in King v. State, 187 Tenn. 431, 215 S.W.2d 813 (1948); Record v. Chickasaw Cooperage Co., 108 Tenn. 657, 69 S.W. 334 (1902).

The Commission believed that requiring a lawyer calling a witness to vouch for the witness's credibility too often unfairly restricts proof. Obviously there is no choice over who witnesses facts. In some instances, rigid enforcement of the voucher rule has caused Constitutional error. See Chambers v. Mississippi, 410 U.S. 284, 93 S. Ct. 1038, 35 L. Ed. 2d 297 (1973).

See Rule 611 for the mode and order of interrogation.

Advisory Commission Comments [2000].

Decisional law prohibits a lawyer from calling a witness —knowing the testimony will be adverse to the lawyer's position —solely to impeach that witness by an inconsistent statement. See the June 1999 issue of the Tennessee Bar Journal at page 23 and Cohen et alia, Tennessee Law of Evidence (3d ed.) at § 613.1.

← Previous Rule 606: Competency of Juror as Witness Next → Rule 608: Evidence of Character and Conduct of Witness

Cross-References

Referenced By (1)

Tenn. R. Evid. Rule 404

This Rule Set

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Last updated: August 2026

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