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14 Wis. Women's L.J. 1 (1999)
Updating the Marital Privileges: A Witness-Centered Rationale

handle is hein.journals/wiswo14 and id is 7 raw text is: Wisconsin Women' s Law Journal VOL. 14 1999 UPDATING THE MARITAL PRIVILEGES: A WITNESS-CENTERED RATIONALE Amanda H. Frost* Levina Enriquez was assaulted by her husband, suffering serious injury.' She fled the family home and took shelter in a local crisis center.2 Ten days later she received a conciliatory phone call from her husband, in which he told her that he was in therapy to control his violent impulses, and he begged her to come back to him.3 Levina refused, and when the state brought criminal charges against him she willingly testified at her husband's trial, recounting the admissions he had made in the phone call.4 He protested at trial, and then again on appeal, that her testimony violated the privilege protecting confiden- tial marital communications.5 The Court of Appeals reversed his con- viction on that ground and ordered a new trial at which Levina did not testify.6 Levina's husband did not spend a single day in jail for the attack. State v. Enriquez,7 summarized above, was showcased in an article critiquing the marital privileges from a feminist perspective,8 but it could just as easily have been cited by a frustrated prosecutor railing * Staff attorney, Public Citizen Litigation Group. BA., Harvard College, 1993; J.D., Harvard Law School, 1997. I would like to thank Professor Martha Minow for her insightful critique of an earlier draft of this article. I also thankJoshua Frost and Richard Glenn for their thoughtful comments and editing. 1. See State v. Enriquez, 609 A.2d 343, 344 (Md. Ct. Spec. App. 1992). 2. See id. 3. See id. 4. See id. 5. See id. 6. See id. at 347. 7. See id. 8. See Margaret J. Chriss, Troubling Degrees of Authority: The Continuing Pursuit of Unequal Marital Roles, 12 LAw & INEQ. J. 225, 251 (1993).

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