What is the judgments of conviction hearsay exception, and does it require the witness to be available?

Normally when you're on trial, you can't just have someone say "I heard this person did this bad thing before" as proof they actually did it. That's called "hearsay" and it's not reliable enough. But if that person was actually put on trial for that bad thing, and a court decided they were guilty, that's good proof they actually did it.

So if Bob is on trial and someone wants to argue Bob can't be trusted because he was found guilty of fraud before, they can bring in the court record of his fraud conviction. The purpose is you don't have to retry Bob's entire fraud case just to show he committed fraud. The court can just look at the fact he was convicted and make their judgment about his credibility.

This only works for really serious crimes, not small things. Also it only works if Bob's previous fraud was an important fact in why he was found guilty back then. You can't just bring up any old conviction that doesn't relate to this case. There has to be a good reason why it's relevant now.