Raymond v. State Ex Rel. Younkins

Collins, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. Martin Younkins, appellee here, was convicted before a magistrate in Howard County of assault and battery upon his wife and sentenced on August 26, 1949, to the Maryland House of Correction for the term of six months. He was subsequently transferred to The Maryland State Reformatory for Males at Breathedsville. On September 15, 1949, he filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus before Judge Herman Moser of the ¹²⁸ Supreme Bench of Baltimore City.

The main contention by the appellant for his release and the reason Judge Moser directed the discharge follows: “My wife and I were not informed of her legal rights as my lawful wife not to testify if she so desired.” Judge Moser granted the writ and after hearing released the prisoner from custody on October 6, 1949. In granting the release the judge said: “I think it is an obligation on the part of the Court to advise the wife it is her free choice to decide whether she wants to testify or not.” H. R. Raymond, Superintendent, Maryland State Reformatory for Males, Breathedsville, Maryland, appellant here, filed in this Court a petition to prosecute an appeal from the order of Judge Moser passed on October 6, 1949. This Court in No. 18, Habeas Corpus Applications, October Term 1949, granted the appellant’s application to appeal. Code 1947 Supplement, Article 42, Section 3C.

In the case of Hanon v. State, 1885, 63 Md. 123 , appellant was indicted under Chapter 120 of the Acts of 1882 for brutally assaulting and beating his wife. At the trial of the case the State offered the wife as a witness. The appellant objected on the ground that she was incompetent to testify against him. This Court said in that case, 63 Md., at pages 125 and 126: “But even if the statute creates a new offense, it does not necessarily follow that the wife could not be a witness.

The principle of necessity, by which under the common law a wife is permitted to testify against her husband on a charge affecting her liberty or person, would seem equally applicable to a statute designed to protect her in either of these respects. The object sought by the present statute is to shield her from the personal violence of her husband, and the danger of defeating this object and the difficulty in supplying the proof, were the wife excluded as a witness would be the same as at common law.” Chapter 545 of the Acts of 1888, 1939 Code, Article 35, Section 4, now provides in part: “In all criminal proceedings the husband or wife of the accused party shall be competent to testify.” The wife, being competent ¹²⁹ as a witness, if there is any right on her part, and we do not here so decide, to be advised that it is her free choice as to whether she will testify against her husband, it is the wife’s right alone. It is certainly no right of the accused husband, fundamentally or otherwise. Illustrative of this is the principle that it is no right of an accused, when an accomplice is called as a witness against him, to have that accomplice informed of