Court Opinion

ID: 9809568
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 21:17:26.047863+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:38:14.283132
License: Public Domain

Clark, J.,
(dissenting): It can not be controverted that communications between husband and wife, on grounds of public policy, can not be given in evidence and this incompetency can not be removed by waiver or by the subsequent divorce of the parties. But there was no offer here to give in such evidence. It was simply a confession of a crime made by a woman who happened at the time to be married, and was made to a third party, not as a transaction or communication made to her husband but as a substantive, independent confession. She did not state in her confession that she had repeated the substance or any part of it to her husband. It would have been incompetent to have shown that she had done so either to corroborate or contradict her, but the substantive independent confession was not rendered incompetent by the fact that perhaps she had also made it to her husband.
Nor was the bare fact that she made the confession in the presence of her husband and at his instance, he (not she) remarking that she had also told it to him, conclusive evidence of duress. There was at this time no evidence of threats or promises. His Honor by overruling the objection raised on that ground, found that there was no duress and his finding is not reviewable. State v. Burgwyn, 87 N. C., 572. Besides on the evidence, as it then stood, this ruling was correct. The remark of the husband that she had narrated the matter to him should have been ruled out if the defendants had asked that it be done, but they did *788not. If afterwards, when the wife was examined in her own behalf, she testified to a state of facts which tended to show duress, if true, his Honor should have been asked to pass upon the sufficiency of this subsequent evidence to show duress by a motion to strike out the confession and we can not hold that it should have been stricken out; certainly not in the absence of any ruling of the court below upon it and an exception taken. The weight of the evidence was for the jury and can not affect the legal questions presented for review.