Court Opinion

ID: 9793756
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 02:52:27.441475+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:06:45.188970
License: Public Domain

Utter, J.
(dissenting) — I dissent. The rule forbidding testimony by one's spouse against the other, cited by the majority (RCW 5.50.060(1)), is a legislatively-created rule. The difficult policy choices were made by the legislature and it has not chosen to engraft an exception similar to that created by the New Jersey court in State v. Briley, 53 N.J. 498, 251 A.2d 442, 36 A.L.R.3d 811 (1969) upon our statute. The Briley case, at page 507, allows a spouse to testify " [i]f there is a single criminal event in which she and others are targets or victims of the husband's criminal conduct in the totality of the integrated incident and formal charges are made against the husband for some or all the offenses committed ..."
Our legislature amended RCW 5.60.060(1) in 1965 to include an exception for crimes against the child or ward of the husband or wife. See Laws of 1965, ch. 13, § 7. This amendment has not since been enlarged to include third persons. The Court of Appeals in State v. Moxley, 6 Wn. App. 153, 491 P.2d 1326 (1971), wrote an excellent historical analysis of the statute and emphasized the legislative intent that the privilege to testify extends, with the narrow exception of the 1965 amendment, only to crimes committed by one spouse against the other. In the face of a clear statutory expression of legislative intent and recent actions showing the legislature is aware of continuing pressures for
*533change in the rule, we should not step into this policy-making arena.
Horowitz and Dolliver, JJ., concur with Utter, J.
Petition for rehearing denied August 4, 1977.