Court Opinion

ID: 9688933
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 18:13:43.277867+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:18:43.105836
License: Public Domain

LANCASTER, Justice
(dissenting).
When a married person commits a crime with his or her spouse and is willing to testify about committing the crime, may *421the defendant on trial silence that testimony by invoking the privilege against adverse spousal testimony? That important question is rightfully this court’s to answer. In my view the court has shirked its responsibility in the name of a comity that is, in this instance, misplaced. For that reason I respectfully dissent.
The Minnesota Constitution separates the government into three distinct branches:
The powers of government shall be divided into three distinct departments: legislative, executive and judicial. No person or persons belonging to or constituting one of these departments shall exercise any of the powers properly belonging to either of the others except in the instances expressly provided in this constitution.
Minn. Const, art III, § 1. The legislative power includes “the power to declare what acts are criminal and to establish the punishment for those acts as part of the substantive law.” State v. Lindsey, 632 N.W.2d 652, 658 (Minn.2001). The judicial branch “regulates the method by which the guilt or innocence of one who is accused of violating a criminal statute is determined.” Id.
As part of the judicial power, this court has the primary responsibility for the regulation of evidentiary matters. Id.; State v. Olson, 482 N.W.2d 212, 215 (Minn.1992). As a matter of comity, though, the court may enforce statutory rules of evidence. State v. Lanam, 459 N.W.2d 656, 658 (Minn.1990); State v. Willis, 332 N.W.2d 180, 184 (Minn.1983). That the court enforces a statute that governs a matter within its authority does not, however, constitute the surrender of its authority to the legislature:
It is true that this court has acquiesced in legislative acts prescribing administrative procedures for admission, and discipline of attorneys as long as such acts did not usurp the right of the court to make the final decision. * * *.
* ■ * * [,T]he court may wish to adopt some of the provisions by rule of the court. However, in so doing, we do not concede that their enactment was a permissible legislative prerogative.
Sharood v. Hatfield, 296 Minn. 416, 424-25, 210 N.W.2d 275, 279-80 (1973) (emphasis added) (holding statute unconstitutional as legislative assumption of judiciary’s power to regulate the practice of law). Notwithstanding legislative attempts to limit the court’s power to regulate eviden-tiary issues, the court’s inherent authority includes the power to establish rules of evidence. Willis, 332 N.W.2d at 184. I agree, therefore, with the majority that “this court retains inherent power to adopt standards by judicial opinion relating to the admissibility of evidence in the interest of justice.”
The majority correctly notes that two marital privileges exist in Minnesota: (1) the privilege against, adverse spousal testimony; and (2) the marital communications privilege. Minn.Stat. § 595.02, subd. 1(a) (2000); see State v. Leecy, 294 N.W.2d 280, 283 (Minn.1980) (stating that section 595.02 has not been superseded by court rule). Marital confidences are protected by the communications privilege. Notwithstanding the majority’s discussion of the communications privilege, that privilege is not at issue in this appeal. The issue before the court, and therefore the issue addressed by this dissent, involves the privilege against adverse spousal testimony when spouses jointly commit a crime.
The majority’s exaltation of the statutory nature of Minnesota’s marital privileges is peculiar in light of its recognition that the statute codifies the common law. The codification of the privilege against ad*422verse spousal testimony does not proscribe the court from interpreting it:
Enactment of the rules governing human affairs into positive legislation reduces the statement of the law to more concise form than common or unwritten law. The advantages of brevity and conciseness are achieved, however, by sacri•ficing the ability to make specific provision for the multitudinous situations which may arise. In common-law jurisdictions this shortcoming has been overcome by judicial construction which modifies and synchronizes statute law with common-law rules and maxims.
2B Norman J. Singer, Statutes and Statutory Construction § 50:02 (6th ed.2000) (footnote omitted).
Minnesota Statutes § 595.02, subd. 1(a), is silent as to whether the privilege against adverse spousal testimony extends to spouses who commit crimes together. The majority’s response, to wait for the legislature to resolve an issue that lies within the court’s inherent authority to decide, ignores that we have not blindly followed the statutory language and that we have narrowed the privilege without legislative direction. See Leecy, 294 N.W.2d at '283 (relying on modern authority that “a marriage well on its way to final dissolution will not support a claim of the privilege” to hold that trial court erred in sustaining an exercise of the privilege against adverse spousal testimony). The majority’s decision portends the abdication of the court’s authority to regulate evidentiary matters.
Despite its acknowledgment of the court’s inherent authority to establish rules of evidence, the majority provides no justification for its refusal to exercise the court’s power to recognize a joint participant exception to the privilege against adverse spousal testimony. Instead, the majority states “[i]t is simply too great a departure from over 100 years of this court’s jurisprudence to adopt” the exception. Neither this court nor the legislature has ever adopted or rejected a joint participant exception to' the privilege against adverse spousal testimony — 100 years of jurisprudence say nothing at all on the subject. Because the legislature has not addressed the issue, the doctrine of comity does not arise. This case presents the first opportunity to rule on an issue that is within the court’s inherent authority to decide. The court, therefore, should exercise its authority to determine whether the exception exists.
The policy underlying the privilege against adverse spousal testimony is to preserve marital harmony. Trammel v. United States, 445 U.S. 40, 44, 100 S.Ct. 906, 63 L.Ed.2d 186 (1980); State v. Feste, 205 Minn. 73, 74-75, 285 N.W. 85, 86 (1939); 1 McCormick on Evidence § 66, at 280 (John W. Strong ed., 5th ed.1999). The preservation of marital harmony is not, however, an absolute goal to be pursued blindly. See State v. Hannuksela, 452 N.W.2d 668, 676 (Minn.1990) (refusing to consider the policy of protecting “the serenity of the marital relationship” in isolation); Leecy, 294 N.W.2d at 283 (noting that a marriage nearing dissolution will not support assertion of the privilege against adverse spousal testimony); see also Minn.Stat. § 595.02, subd. 1(a) (listing exceptions).
“[Ejvidentiary privileges constitute barriers to the ascertainment of truth and are therefore to be disfavored and narrowly limited to their purposes * * Larson v. Montpetit, 275 Minn. 394, 402, 147 N.W.2d 580, 586 (1966). We have narrowly construed the marital communications privilege to assure a jury’s access to relevant facts:
[I]f this policy of affording protection to the serenity of the marital relationship were to be considered in isolation, a *423strong argument could be advanced justifying a broad construction [of the marital communications privilege]. However, to give such broad construction to the term “communication,” would burden another important social policy — to-wit, one concerned with assuring that a jury in a criminal trial have access to all relevant facts. ⅞ * * “[A] loyal spouse should not, in our view, become a partner in crime with the blessing of the law bestowed through a strained construction of the statute which is said to be supported by a policy of promoting marital bliss.”
Hannuksela, 452 N.W.2d at 676 (quoting People v. Simpson, 39 Ill.App.3d 661, 360 N.E.2d 517, 524 (1976), rev’d on other grounds, 68 Ill.2d 276, 12 Ill.Dec. 234, 369 N.E.2d 1248 (1977)).1
The majority ignores our refusal in Hannuksela to condone the transformation of a marriage into a criminal enterprise. In effect, the majority “ ‘secures, to every [spouse], one safe and unquestionable and ever ready accomplice for every imaginable crime.’” Trammel, 445 U.S. at 52, 100 S.Ct. 906 (quoting 5 Jeremy Bentham, Rationale of Judicial Evidence 340 (1827)). The goal of preserving marital harmony, however, “does not justify assuring a criminal that he can enlist the aid of his spouse in a criminal enterprise without fear that by recruiting an accomplice or coconspirator he is creating another potential witness.” United States v. Van Drunen, 501 F.2d 1393, 1396-97 (7th Cir.1974) (recognizing joint participant exception to the privilege against adverse spousal testimony); see United States v. Clark, 712 F.2d 299, 300-01 (7th Cir.1983) (citing Van Drunen); United States v. Trammel, 583 F.2d 1166, 1169-70 (10th Cir.1978) (same), aff'd on other grounds, 445 U.S. 40, 100 S.Ct. 906, 63 L.Ed.2d 186 (1980).2
This court’s precedent belies the majority’s characterization of federal case law as being “of little persuasive value.” This court has relied on federal case law to interpret the privilege against adverse spousal testimony. See Leecy, 294 N.W.2d at 283 (citing United States v. Fisher, 518 F.2d 836 (2d Cir.1975)); cf. Hannuksela, 452 N.W.2d at 676 & n. 11 (interpreting the marital communications privilege in accord with federal case law).
The majority imposes substantial costs on the criminal justice system. The majority’s refusal to recognize a joint participant exception to the privilege against ad*424verse spousal testimony prevents the jury from hearing the testimony of appellant’s spouse because of appellant’s — not the witness’s — exercise of the privilege. Thus, the majority deprives the jury of access to highly relevant facts, to-wit, the testimony of a person who helped commit the crime.
Although the majority imposes substantial costs on the criminal justice system, it does not advance the interest underlying the privilege against adverse spousal testimony. Appellant admitted he married Jamie to take advantage of the privilege against adverse spousal testimony to prevent her from testifying about the robbery they committed before they murdered Camp. Jamie acknowledged the same, adding that her marriage to appellant was a “sham.” Thus, rather than preserving marital harmony, the majority preserves a relationship in which each partner really has secured “ ‘one safe and unquestionable and ever ready accomplice for every imaginable crime.’ ” Trammel, 445 U.S. at 52, 100 S.Ct. 906 (quoting 5 Jeremy Bentham, Rationale of Judicial Evidence 340 (1827)). Appellant’s clarification that he married Jamie to take advantage of the privilege and because he loved her does not alter the conclusion that the majority fails to advance the interest underlying the privilege. “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.” Id. Here, Jamie agreed to testify against appellant. The barrier to the ascertainment of truth erected by the majority could not be more complete. The majority banishes from the witness stand a person who committed a crime and is willing to testify about it.
A spouse who is willing to testify against his or her spouse about crimes they committed together will suffer perverse consequences as a result of the majority’s decision:
[T]he [state] is unlikely to offer a [spouse] * ⅜ * lenient treatment if it knows that [the other, spouse] can prevent [the spouse] from giving adverse testimony. If the [state] is dissuaded from making such an offer, the privilege can have the untoward effect of permitting one spouse to escape justice at the expense of the other. It hardly seems conducive to the preservation of the marital relation to place a [spouse] in jeopardy solely by virtue of [the other spouse’s] control over [the spouse’s] testimony.
Id. at 52-53,100 S.Ct. 906.
The majority fails to explain its refusal to exercise the court’s inherent authority to establish rules of evidence to recognize a joint participant exception to the privilege against adverse spousal testimony. In my view, the substantial burdens the majority imposes on the criminal justice system by permitting appellant to deprive the jury of the testimony of one of Camp’s murderers are not justified by its thin reasoning and citation to family law cases. The legislature has not explicitly said that the testimonial privilege should extend to joint participants, and not even comity demands this perverse result. I would accept for the judiciary the responsibility of determining whether a joint participant exception to the privilege against adverse spousal testimony exists. Having accepted that responsibility, I would conclude that such an exception does exist, and affirm the conviction.

. The majority misinterprets Hannuksela to support its conclusion that "our jurisprudence clearly weighs the balance in favor of the social policy of protecting the sanctity of the marriage.” Hannuksela recognized the conflict between the policy of protecting the marital relationship and the policy of assuring that a jury in a criminal trial has access to all relevant facts, and adopted a narrow construction of the marital communications privilege so as to "best serve[ ] both policies.” 452 N.W.2d at 676.

. In Trammel, the United States Supreme Court vested in the witness-spouse alone the privilege to refuse to testify adversely to the defendant-spouse. Trammel, 445 U.S. at 53, 100 S.Ct. 906. Relying, at least in part, on the decision in Trammel to vest the privilege in the witness-spouse alone, the Second, Third, and Ninth Circuits refused to adopt a joint participant exception to the privilege against adverse spousal testimony. See United States v. Ramos-Oseguera, 120 F.3d 1028, 1042 (9th Cir.1997), overruled on other grounds by United States v. Nordby, 225 F.3d 1053, 1059 (9th Cir.2000), overruled by United States v. Buckland, 277 F.3d 1173, 1182 (9th Cir.2002); In re Grand Jury Subpoena United States, 755 F.2d 1022, 1026-27 (2d Cir.1985), vacated as moot sub nom. United States v. Koecher, 475 U.S. 133, 106 S.Ct. 1253, 89 L.Ed.2d 103 (1986); In re Grand Jury Empanelled October 18, 1979, 633 F.2d 276, 278 (3d Cir.1980). That the nontestifying spouse controls the privilege in Minnesota undermines the persuasive value of these decisions.