Chapter 8: Privileges
Case Study 1
Overview Based on: United States v. Chandler, 2011 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 52665 (Dist. Nev. 2011).
The defendant, Tavaras Chandler, has been charged with one count of being a felon in possession of a firearm in violation of federal law. The defendant filed a pretrial motion to exclude statements that might be made by his wife, Kimberly Valley. The prosecution would like to offer the statements against Chandler at his trial. On February 12, 2010, Valley, who was accompanied by her mother and 15-year-old daughter “AC,” telephoned the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department (LVMPD) from a convenience store to report that she and her daughter had been beaten by defendant, Chandler, at their apartment earlier that day. When LVMPD officers arrived, Valley told them that the defendant had punched her in the head and chest with a closed fist and had been beating her repeatedly for approximately three days, sometimes with a wooden stick. Valley also explained that the defendant, Chandler, held her against her will and kept her from leaving the apartment by taking the phones away and grabbing her by the hair when she attempted to escape. She signed a statement corroborating her oral statements. Her statement also contained the following: “He also pulled a gun on me. It was black. He pulled it on me. And told me he would kill me if I ever cheat on him.... The gun that the police got. Tavaras has pulled that gun on me before. Last week he put it up to me. And told me he would kill me.”
Subsequently, LVMPD officers searched the apartment that Kimberly Valley shared with her husband, the defendant, and her daughter after receiving Valley’s consent to do so. The officers recovered a 40-caliber handgun in the location where Valley had predicted. Later, in May of 2010, LVMPD officers again responded to the apartment of Valley and Tavaras after receiving a 911 call from Valley’s mother indicating that the defendant was beating Valley on that date. Valley then spoke with police and signed another voluntary statement explaining that the defendant had been beating her. The officers also learned that the defendant had hit the daughter, AC.
The defendant filed a motion requesting that all of Valley’s statements, both oral and written, be excluded from the defendant’s trial because he anticipated that his wife would be claiming both of her marital privileges not to testify against Chandler and, therefore, she would be unavailable for cross-examination.
No. The wife, here, possesses a common-law marital testimonial privilege not to testify against her husband, if she wishes. However, as an exception to this privilege, she may testify where she has been the victim of criminal acts of her husband. Under the modern view, the defendant spouse is not a holder of the marital testimonial privilege and generally may not assert it in a criminal trial.
Yes. The judge would not commit error by ordering a victim spouse to testify against the battering spouse because an exception to the marital testimonial privilege exists when the spouse or a child of the marriage has been injured intentionally by the criminal acts of a defendant spouse..
No. Prior to the Supreme Court’s decision in Trammel, a defendant-spouse could invoke the anti-marital facts privilege to bar his or her spouse from testifying. See Trammel, 445 U.S. at 51-52. After this case, the defendant, in federal cases and in most state prosecutions, no longer retained status as a holder of the privilege. See Trammel v. United States, Part II, Chapter 1.