Rule 2:607.IMPEACHMENT OF WITNESSES (Rule 2:607(b) derived from Code § 8.01- 401(A); and Rule 2:607(c) derived from Code § 8.01-403).

Rule 2:607 is the organizing rule for witness impeachment in Virginia. Subdivision (a) opens by making impeachment available to any party other than the one who called the witness, using any proof relevant to the witness’s credibility, subject to Rule 2:403’s balancing test. The rule then lists eight non-exclusive impeachment methods: reputation evidence under Rule 2:608(a) and (b); prior convictions under Rule 2:609; prior unadjudicated perjury under Rule 2:608(d); prior false accusations of sexual misconduct under Rule 2:608(e); bias under Rule 2:610; prior inconsistent statements under Rule 2:613; contradiction by other evidence; and any other evidence with a logical tendency to show the witness’s perception, memory, or narration is defective, or the witness’s sincerity or veracity is questionable. Two of those methods — reputation evidence and prior convictions — are unavailable to a party who has called an adverse witness.

Subdivisions (b) and (c) handle two special witness categories. A witness with an adverse interest may be examined with leading questions by the party who calls that witness, and is then subject to cross-examination by the opposing party. A witness who proves adverse — one who surprises the calling party by testifying unfavorably — triggers a different mechanism: the calling party may, in the court’s discretion, prove that the witness made an inconsistent statement at another time, following the procedure in Rule 2:613.

When that impeachment of a proving-adverse witness happens in a jury trial, subdivision (c)(ii) requires the court, on motion of either party, to instruct the jury that it may consider the inconsistent statement only to contradict the witness — not as substantive proof of the facts the statement asserts. That instruction keeps the jury from treating an impeaching statement as if it were affirmative evidence of what happened.