New Mexico ruling abolishes privilege on spousal testimony
Source: Associated Press
PAUL DAVENPORT ASSOCIATED PRESS
AUGUST 31, 2019 04:07 PM, UPDATED 15 MINUTES AGO
The New Mexico Supreme Court is abolishing a legal privilege that bars use of testimony by a defendant's spouse.
The Santa Fe-based court's ruling says the spousal communication privilege "has outlived its useful life" and is based in misogyny.
The ruling Friday bars future use of the privilege in the state court system.
The court took the action in a ruling that upholds David Gutierrez's murder conviction in a 2002 killing in Clovis. He had made incriminating statements to both a wife he later divorced and to his second wife.
The court took the action in a ruling that upholds David Gutierrez's murder conviction in a 2002 killing in Clovis. He had made incriminating statements to both a wife he later divorced and to his second wife.
Read more: https://www.fresnobee.com/news/politics-government/national-politics/article234603037.html
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The privilege is usually--I don't know about New Mexico--held by the witness.
The wife, for example, couldn't bar the husband from testifying against her. But the state couldn't force the husband to testify against his wofe. It was a privilege that let the spouse say, "No, I won't testify against my partner." That might be because of economic interests, the interest in having two parents for the kids, out of affection, or simply because once on the stand all kinds of private things might be revealed that the partner doesn't want to have revealed. In other words, not so much self-incrimination as self-humiliation and airing one's dirty laundry in public.
That allowed for testimony. It didn't compel testimony.
Notice that my example must be somehow misogynistic in ways I don't see. The right was symmetrical, and neither spouse could be compelled to testify against the other. Even as many say, "We must stop compulsion," what I really see them saying is, "We must not compel things I like and approve of, but we must compel others to do things they might not want to do." We're all still petty authoritarians, but more principled in our self-interest. And more easily manipulated, too, I think. If the word "misogyny" wasn't in there, I think many would 
and move on.
What the right did do, sadly, was allow one partner to threaten the other to compel exercise of the privilege. In that I could see the exercise of misogyny, even if spousal abuse goes both ways. But that makes something that's corollary merely corollary.
