Court Opinion

ID: 9472634
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 04:06:09.507742+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:43:03.017891
License: Public Domain

JENKINS, District Judge,
concurring:
I concur in the judgment of the court that the conviction of Neal should be affirmed. My reasons are set forth below.
The application of a Crime/Fraud exception to the usual privilege against the disclosure by a spouse-witness of an asserted confidential marital communication assumes that that which was testified to was such a confidential marital communication which, but for the exception, would ordinarily be excluded as privileged at the instance of the defendant. That which would ordinarily be kept out because of defendant’s privilege is admitted into evidence because of the exception.
This is merely an alternative way of describing the boundary of the traditional rule against the disclosure in a Court of Law of a confidential marital communication when a defendant doesn’t want it disclosed, purportedly for the public policy reason of preserving a marital relationship which in most instances has long since vanished or to encourage other couples not involved in the case to communicate well one with another. The twin facets of the rule suggested by the court — the privilege and the Crime/Fraud exception — assume the existence in fact of a confidential marital communication.
In my opinion, the testimony in this case, even though that of an estranged spouse who was an immunized government witness, was not spousal testimony which disclosed a confidential marital communication. The witness simply described what she saw. While I recognize that one can communicate using various means, and that showing may be equally informative as telling, it seems to me that the privilege has been historically applied to that which was told to a spouse by words and not to acts or deeds observed by a spouse.
Thus, neither the application of the rule against the disclosure of a confidential marital communication — whatever remains of that privilege since Trammel v. United States, 445 U.S. 40, 100 S.Ct. 906, 68 L.Ed.2d 186 (1980), nor the application of a suggested Crime/Fraud exception to such rule is required.
The court simply need not reach that question.
I would have no trouble with the application of a Crime/Fraud exception to an appropriate accessory-after-the-fact case as one way of describing the boundary of what remains of the privilege. A preferable way in my view would be to affirmatively describe what vestige of the historical practice remains — not by describing what is excepted from it, but by describing what is included in it. The method used is much like describing a quarter of an apple by saying it is a whole apple less three-fourths. Such, however, is more a matter of style than of substance. Either description is accurate.
The important thing in this case is that the testimony received did not disclose a confidential marital communication. One need go no further.
As to the remaining issues, I concur in the opinion of Judge Barrett.