Court Opinion

ID: 9638380
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 15:42:33.127382+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:10:06.154708
License: Public Domain

*569CLARK, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
Admittedly the common-law principle that “a wife cannot be produced either for or against her husband, ‘quia sunt duae animae in carne una,’ ” Co.Litt., f. 6b, 1628, is gone; indeed, there is none now so poor as to do it reverence. But I think we tend to ovei'look the fact that our duty to interpret “the principles of the common law” in the light of “reason and experience,” Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, rule 26, compels us to discover anew a rational rule, and that a rule looking at least halfway toward the past is itself a new embodiment of the law without, however, the gain of being a real adjustment to modern life. In this instance, therefore, I prefer the forthright approach of a great American judge, McDermott, J., speaking for a unanimous court in Yoder v. United States, 10 Cir., 80 F.2d 665, and placing his decision by preference on this very point.1
For present purposes, however, the issue may be narrowed, as it is in the last paragraph of the opinion. For we really have to do with the exception, recognized even at common law, of a wife’s testimony as to her husband’s crimes against herself. Since it is said quite properly that this exception “probably extends” to the privilege against the admission of confidential communications, 8 Wigmore on Evidence, § 2338, 3d Ed. 1940, I assume no special note need be taken of the defendant’s letter of March, 1947, beyond the wife’s testimony generally — even if the lack of exception to this bit of evidence is overlooked. And that this was a crime more against the wife’s property than her person does not seem to be stressed and is not ground for a sound distinction. 8 Wigmore on Evidence, § 2239, 3d Ed.1940; A. L. I. Model Code of Evidence, Rule 216(c). Hence we find exclusion here limited to the single point that the wife was not the victim of the frauds for which the defendant was being tried. I submit that this is not a necessary deduction, or one grounded in “reason and experience,” from that very vague and troublesome concept so criticized by Wigmore, op. cit., of “necessity.” For no attempt is ever made actually to determine whether the wife’s testimony is really necessary to the prosecution’s (not her) case, as of course none can well be made. Often the testimony of the victim herself may not be absolutely necessary for conviction; on the other hand, testimony of successive defraudings of innocent women, as here, may be the very evidence to place the case beyond dispute. Why should we not face it boldly that this vague label is but one of those judicial flourishes indulged in by judges to cover up a retreat from the impossible position to which Lord Coke’s doctrine would otherwise have pushed them?2
Should we not therefore turn to the only solid ground — if any — for the exclusion, namely, the promotion of marital peace, etc. ? Wigmore, op. cit. But then we must recognize that the reason for the exclusion is now gone entirely, put an end to by the husband’s acts. And it will not be a difficult task, or a collateral excursion, for the judge to determine that fact, as did the judge here quite quickly. Certainly it is not any more difficult to conclude that the marriage is already wrecked in such a case than in the one where the prosecutor contemplates making the wife his star witness and frames the indictment accordingly. There seems little difference between the situation where she shows herself ready to testify to the exact charge, and that where, as here, she is ready to support a Chinese copy of it. I think that the judge’s ruling below, made after careful hearing and argument, faced modern realities in the spirit invoked in Funk v. United States, 290 U.S. 371, 54 S.Ct. 212, 78 L.Ed. 369, 93 A.L.R. 1136, and now embodied as a mandate in F. R. Cr. P. 26. I would affirm.

 Approved by those courts of last resort, the law reviews: 24 Calif.L.Rev. 472; 4 Duke B. A. J. 107; 35 Mich.L.Rev. 329; 20 Minn.L.Rev. 693; 10 So. Calif.L.Rev. 94. See also Hutchins & Slesinger, Some Reflections on the Law of Evidence; Family Relations, 13 Minn.L.Rev. 675.

 It is to be noted that in neither Yoder v. United States, 10 Cir., 80 F.2d 665, nor Brunner v. United States, 6 Cir., 168 F.2d 281, was the wife the victim; nor did discussion turn upon this point in either case.