Opinion ID: 1970433
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: the marital communication privilege and waiver thereof

Text: Weedon's first argument is that the trial court erred in allowing Mrs. Weedon to testify regarding his conversation with her on October 10, 1992, during which he described in detail his assault on Ward. He argues that this conversation was protected by the marital communication privilege, D.R.E. 504. [10] He further contends that his subsequent disclosure to Falahee, among others, that he took care of Ward did not constitute waiver of the marital privilege because the substance of his conversation with Mrs. Weedon was quantitatively and qualitatively different from his disclosure to third parties. The State responds that, though Weedon's subsequent disclosures do not squarely extinguish the privilege under D.R.E. 504, the rule's underlying policies mandate a finding of waiver. Disclosure by a speaker-spouse to a third party of subject matter that parallels that of an earlier, otherwise privileged marital communication constitutes waiver. D.R.E. 510 states in relevant part: A person upon whom these rules confer a privilege against disclosure waives the privilege if he... voluntarily discloses ... any significant part of the privileged matter.... D.R.E. 510. Interpreting a verbatim counterpart to D.R.E. 510, the court in State v. Wilkinson, 136 N.H. 170, 612 A.2d 926 (1992), confronted the issue before this Court  namely whether a subsequent disclosure of the substance of an otherwise protected marital communication constitutes waiver, id., 136 N.H. 170, 612 A.2d at 929. In Wilkinson, on the evening of the incident, May 29, 1989, the defendant's wife prodded him into admitting to her that he had hit someone and that the impact had caused visible damage to their automobile. [11] In April 1990 the defendant related the same incident to one of his friends, as well as another witness. Id., 136 N.H. 170, 612 A.2d at 927-29. Relying on New Hampshire Rule of Evidence 510, the Wilkinson court held that, though the May 29 conversation was initially privileged, the defendant's subsequent disclosure of that conversation to a third person constituted waiver of the privilege. Finding no error in the trial court's admission of the communication, the court affirmed defendant's hit-and-run conviction. Id., 136 N.H. 170, 612 A.2d at 931. We find that Wilkinson is persuasive and applicable here. In the instant case, the October 10, 1992, conversation between Weedon and his wife falls squarely within the language of D.R.E. 504 as a privileged marital communication which does not fall within any of the exceptions stated in that rule. See D.R.E. 504(a) & (d). The acrimonious nature of their marital relationship does not affect this result. See, e.g., Commonwealth v. Clark, 347 Pa.Super. 128, 500 A.2d 440, 442-43 (1985). Weedon waived the privilege, however, by his subsequent actions. In disclosing to third parties, including Falahee, that he took care of Ward, Weedon repeated in substance (absent details) that which he had earlier told his wife to keep secret. Under the Wilkinson court's persuasive explication of D.R.E. 510's counterpart, such subsequent disclosure constituted a waiver of the marital communication privilege. See D.R.E. 510; Wilkinson, 136 N.H. 170, 612 A.2d at 931; Model Code of Evidence 218 cmt. (1942) (elucidating in comment to an early waiver provision that [t]he theory of the Rule is that a spouse ought not to be able to select for disclosure from among communications upon a given subject those which he deems favorable, and to suppress the rest[]); see also Dutton v. State, Del.Supr., 452 A.2d 127, 145 (1982) (defendant's subsequent disclosure of matter communicated to him in an attorney-client context constituted waiver of the attorney-client privilege). But see Clark, 347 Pa.Super. 128, 500 A.2d at 442-43 (subsequent disclosure to a third person by the speaker-spouse of a conversation that otherwise falls within the marital communication privilege does not constitute waiver); Commonwealth v. Ferri, 410 Pa.Super. 67, 599 A.2d 208, 211-12 (1991), cert. denied, ___ U.S. ___, 114 S.Ct. 1189, 127 L.Ed.2d 540 (1994) (extending Clark 's nonwaiver rule to the attorney-client privilege). Further, D.R.E. 510 explicitly states that voluntary disclosure of  any significant part [of an otherwise privileged marital communication] constitutes waiver. D.R.E. 510 (emphasis added). Weedon's argument that there was no waiver because his later communications were sparser in detail than the earlier one with his wife is unpersuasive. Weedon's later communications conveyed the significant part of his earlier statement to his wife, namely Weedon's perpetration of the Ward assault. The Court holds that Weedon waived the marital communication privilege and thus finds no merit in his first claim on this appeal.