A statement qualifies as a statement against interest for purposes of the hearsay exception for statements against interest only if the statement, at the time the declarant made it, was so contrary to the declarant's interest that a reasonable person in the declarant's position would not have made if the declarant had believed the statement to be untrue.

Cf. United States v. Adedoyin, 369 F.3d 337, 343-344 (3d Cir. 2004) (upholding trial court's admission of evidence of defendant's 1981 felony conviction predicated on a plea of nolo contendere because "the prosecution did not....Federal Rule of Evidence 410 or a comparable State rule bars the use of plea offers, plea negotiations, withdrawn pleas, and pleas of nolo contendere (no contest pleas) against the defendant who engaged in such plea negotiations, entered such a withdrawn plea, or entered such a plea of nolo contendere.

Cf. Swinton v. Potomac Corp., 270 F.3d 794, 814-815 (9th Cir. 2001) (upholding trial court's admission into evidence of employer's remedial conduct undertaken in response to its discovery of discrimination because it was....A subsequent remedial measure is not barred by the rule limiting admissibility of subsequent remedial measures if the subsequent remedial measure is offered to impeach a witness or to show any matter (such as ownership, control, or feasibility of precautionary measures) other than negligence, culpable conduct, a defect in a product, a defect in a product's design, or a need for a warning or instruction; but a subsequent remedial measure may be used to show feasibility of precautionary measures only if feasibility has been controverted.

Fed. R. Evid. 103(d) advisory committee's note ("This wording of the plain error principle is from Rule 52(b) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. While judicial unwillingness to be constructed by mechanical breakdowns of the adversary system has been more pronounced in criminal cases, there is no scarcity of decisions to the same...An objection is unnecessary to preserve a claim of error and a trial court should exclude, on its own initiative, evidence offered against a criminal defendant or other disadvantaged party when admission of the evidence would be "plain error."