Court Opinion

ID: 9855864
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 06:32:23.059092+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:37:13.877774
License: Public Domain

Clarke, Justice,
dissenting.
The trend in recent years has been to liberally construe rules relating to the admissibility of relevant evidence. In my opinion, rules and statutes which impose a status of incompetence upon a witness to testify to otherwise admissible facts should be strictly construed. The General Assembly has made a public policy statement by mandating that the court shall consider evidence of the conduct of each party toward the other in determining whether or not to grant alimony. Code Ann. § 30-201. The incompetency to testify imposed by Code Ann. § 38-1606 should be construed with a view toward what I perceive to be the state’s public policy that rules against the admission of relevant evidence be strictly construed.
Under the holding of the majority in this case, one spouse would be allowed to testify that the other spouse was. guilty of nagging and fussing and thereby reap whatever benefit might result from the jury’s knowledge of this fact. At the same time, the other spouse, who might have knowledge of his or her spouse’s homosexual conduct outside the marriage, would not be allowed to share this knowledge with the jury. I do not believe that the definition of adultery demands that homosexual relationships fall within it. That being the case, I believe the majority erred in depriving one spouse of the right to testify of knowledge of the other spouse’s homosexual conduct. For these reasons, I would have reversed the trial court and allowed the wife to testify.