Court Opinion

ID: 9740491
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 20:36:26.016741+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:24:18.521356
License: Public Domain

Boslaugh, J.,
dissenting.
The defendant has been tried twice, convicted of first degree murder, and sentenced to death. The majority now holds that the defendant must be tried a third time or set free because the State used the testimony of his divorced spouse in the second trial.
All authorities seem to agree that once a divorce decree becomes “final,” a divorced spouse is a competent witness. At the time of the second trial in this case, a judgment had been entered in the trial court divorcing the defendant from his spouse. Because the defendant’s appeal in the divorce proceeding was pending, the court holds that the marriage was still “in existence” within the meaning of Neb. Rev. Stat. § 27-505(2) (Reissue 1979).
It seems to me that the relatively few cases that have considered the question and support this result ignore the reason for the rule.
The usual reason given for the rule barring the testimony of one spouse against the other in a criminal proceeding is that “such a policy is necessary to foster family peace.” See Hawkins v. United States, 358 U.S. 74, 79 S. Ct. 136, 3 L. Ed. 2d 125 (1958). Once a dissolution proceeding has proceeded to judgment and a decree of divorce has been entered, it would seem that there is little family peace to be fostered.
*280As Chief Justice Burger observed in Trammel v. United States, 445 U.S. 40, 52, 100 S. Ct. 906, 63 L. Ed. 2d 186 (1980): “The contemporary justification for affording an accused such a privilege is also unpersuasive. When one spouse is willing to testify against the other in a criminal proceeding — whatever the motivation — their relationship is almost certainly in disrepair; there is probably little in the way of marital harmony for the privilege to preserve. In these circumstances, a rule of evidence that permits an accused to prevent adverse spousal testimony seems far more likely to frustrate justice than to foster family peace. Indeed, there is reason to believe that vesting the privilege in the accused could actually undermine the marital relationship.”
The privilege itself has been severely criticized. According to Wigmore, the privilege no longer has adequate reason for retention and is an indefensible obstruction to truth in practice. See 8 J. Wigmore, Evidence in Trials at Common Law § 2228 (1961). In 2 J. Weinstein & M. Berger, Weinstein’s Evidence ¶ 505[02] at 505-10 (1982), the author states: “Nevertheless, many leading commentators concluded that the privilege is unjustified, that it does not contribute to marital felicity, is based on the outmoded concept that husband and wife are one, and causes the suppression of relevant evidence, thereby impeding the doing of justice. Wigmore termed the privilege ‘a legal anachronism,’ McCormick called it ‘an archaic survival of a mystical religious dogma,’ Hutchins, and Slesinger could ‘see no reason for sacrificing individual justice ... to a mythical family unity,’ and both the Model Code and the Uniform Rules refused to adopt such a rule.”
In Trammel v. United States, supra at 48-50, the Court noted: “Since 1958, when Hawkins was decided, support for the privilege against adverse spousal testimony has been eroded further. Thirty-one jurisdictions, including Alaska and Hawaii, then allowed an accused a privilege to prevent adverse *281spousal testimony. 358 U.S., at 81, n. 3 [79 S. Ct. 136, 3 L. Ed. 2d 125 (1958)] (Stewart, J., concurring). The number has now declined to 24. In 1974, the National Conference on Uniform State Laws revised its Uniform Rules of Evidence, but again rejected the Hawkins rule in favor of a limited privilege for confidential communications. See Uniform Rules of Evidence, Rule 504. That proposed rule has been enacted in Arkansas, North Dakota, and Oklahoma' —each of which in 1958 permitted an accused to exclude adverse spousal testimony. The trend in state law toward divesting the accused of the privilege to bar adverse spousal testimony has special relevance because the laws of marriage and domestic relations are concerns traditionally reserved to the states. See Sosna v. Iowa, 419 U.S. 393, 404 [95 S. Ct. 553, 42 L. Ed. 2d 532] (1975). Scholarly criticism of the Hawkins rule hás also continued unabated.”
Some recent cases suggest that divorce or dissolution of the marriage is not necessary to bar the privilege if the facts indicate that in reality there is no marriage to preserve. In United States v. Brown, 605 F.2d 389 (8th Cir. 1979), in noting that the privilege is not absolute, the court said at 396: ‘‘Clincy was totally unharmed by his wife’s testimony. We conclude, moreover, that the marital privilege itself went unscathed in this case. The privilege is not absolute. The Federal Rules of Evidence, Rule 501, concerning privileges in general, requires application of common law principles to privileges as those principles ‘may be interpreted . . . in the light of reason and experience.’ Privileges are impediments to the search for truth, finding their justification in the priority of societal values they serve. The higher-than-truth value served by the privilege before us is the protection of the marital bond. Where, as here, Mrs. Clincy was with her husband for two weeks and had not seen him for the entire eight months between his leaving her and the date of trial, it is difficult to visualize *282how preservation of that value would have required the total exclusion of Mrs. Clincy from the witness stand. See United States v. Cameron, 556 F.2d 752, 756 (5th Cir. 1977).”
In United States v. Cameron, 556 F.2d 752 (5th Cir. 1977), in holding the testimony of a spouse admissible, the court said at 755-56: “The exclusion of adverse testimony by a spouse is not an absolute privilege. There have been long recognized exceptions, such as exist in prosecutions for crimes committed by one spouse against the other or against the children of either; actions by one of the spouses against an outsider for an intentional injury to the marital relation; or in a criminal prosecution against one spouse in which a declaration of the other spouse made confidentially to the accused would tend to justify or reduce the grade of the offense. McCormick, Evidence, Section 85 (1972). See Wolfe v. United States, 291 U.S. 7, 54 S. Ct. 279, 78 L. Ed. 617 (1934); Funk v. United States, 290 U.S. 371, 54 S. Ct. 212, 78 L. Ed. 369 (1933). The Federal Rules of Evidence, Rule 501, recognizes no marital privilege per se, but rather recognizes a general privilege which ‘shall be governed by the principles of the common law as they may be interpreted by the courts of the United States in the light of reason and experience.’
‘‘This reason and experience which the Supreme Court spoke of in Wolfe, Hawkins, and various other opinions, and which Congress refers to in Rule 501, places oh the federal courts the responsibility of examining the policies behind the federal common law privileges so as to alter or amend them when reason and experience demand. If we are to fashion any exception in the case before us we must do so consistent with the rationale for the privilege. In the present case there were a number of factors which indicate that in spite of the legal existence of the marriage, as a social fact it had expired. There was no residence at which both spouses lived; there was a great disparity between the amount of time that *283the couple cohabited and the time that one or the other chose not to live together; the husband had a more permanent living arrangement with another partner than with his spouse and, indeed, fathered a child with that person. All these factors cumulatively signify a marriage that was moribund. If the marital privilege is intended to preserve domestic harmony — the most substantial argument that judges and writers today advance in support of it — it is apparent that the present case is not one in which the privilege would serve any such purpose.
“We fashion no broad rule with our holding today as to when the marital privilege should be disallowed. We decide narrowly on the facts as they appear before us. That is, where, as here, the spouse was called to testify only as to objective facts, with no questions allowed as to any communication between the spouses, and where the evidence supported a finding that the marriage was no longer viable and its members had little hope or desire for reconciliation, reason, experience and common sense indicate that the traditional policy reasons for the privilege are non-existent. It was properly disallowed.”
See, also, United States v. Fisher, 518 F.2d 836 (2d Cir. 1975); Hudson v. State, 295 So. 2d 766 (Miss. 1974); United States v. Ryno, 130 F. Supp. 685 (S.D. Cal. 1955), aff’d 232 F.2d 581 (9th Cir. 1956) (on ground testimony was not prejudicial).
The interest of the State in bringing the defendant to justice in this case should outweigh any hope of reconciliation between the parties after the decree of divorce had been entered in the dissolution proceeding.
McCown, J., joins in this dissent.