The New Mexico Supreme Court has barred the state’s court system from continued use of a longstanding legal privilege that disallows testimony by a defendant’s spouse, saying it is based in misogyny and “has outlived its useful life.”
The Santa Fe-based state high court ruled Friday in an appeal of a man who the ruling said had made incriminating statements to both a wife he later divorced and his second wife regarding the 2002 shotgun killing of a Clovis man.
Both women testified during David Gutierrez’s 2017 trial in the killing of Jose Valverde, who was found dead in a boxcar he used as his home.
Gutierrez, whose defense objected to the women’s testimony, was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison.
Read the source article at Associated Press News
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