Hawkins v. United States

• Decision Date: 09 November 1957
• Docket Number: No. 5646.,5646.
• Citation: 249 F.2d 735
• Parties: James Clifton HAWKINS, Appellant, v. UNITED STATES of America, Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Tenth Circuit

249 F.2d 735 (1957)

James Clifton HAWKINS, Appellant, v. UNITED STATES of America, Appellee.

No. 5646.

United States Court of Appeals Tenth Circuit.

November 9, 1957.

Cleon A. Summers, Muskogee, Okl., for appellant.

Russell H. Smith, First Asst. U. S. Atty., Tulsa, Okl. (B. Hayden Crawford, U. S. Atty., Tulsa, Okl., was with him on the brief), for appellee.

Before BRATTON, Chief Judge, and HUXMAN and BREITENSTEIN, Circuit Judges.

BRATTON, Chief Judge.

The indictment in this case charged that appellant transported a girl in interstate commerce from Mena, Arkansas, to Tulsa, Oklahoma, for immoral purposes. The jury found appellant guilty; the court sentenced him to imprisonment; and he appealed.

Error is predicated upon the action of the court in permitting the wife of appellant to testify as a witness for the government. With certain exceptions which have no bearing here, it was the general rule at common law that neither husband nor wife was competent to give testimony as a witness for or against the other in any case, civil or criminal; and for a long period of time that rule was consistently iterated, reiterated, and applied in the United States courts. Stein v. Bowman, 13 Pet. 209, 221, 10 L.Ed. 129; Lucas v. Brooks, 18 Wall. 436, 452, 21 L.Ed. 779; Stickney v. Stickney, 131 U.S. 227, 9 S.Ct. 677, 33 L.Ed. 136; Graves v. United States, 150 U.S. 118, 14 S.Ct. 40, 37 L.Ed. 1021; Hendrix v. United States, 219 U.S. 79, 91, 31 S.Ct. 193, 55 L.Ed. 102; Jin Fuey Moy v. United States, 254 U.S. 189, 41 S.Ct. 98, 65 L.Ed. 214. But it later became the settled rule in the United States courts that the wife of a defendant on trial for a criminal offense is a competent witness in his behalf. Funk v. United States, 290 U.S. 371, 54 S.Ct. 212, 78 L.Ed. 369. That case did not involve and the court did not determine the question whether a wife is a competent witness against her husband on the trial of a criminal case in which he is charged with an offense. But in Yoder v. United States, 10 Cir., 80 F.2d 665, this court committed itself to the view that a wife is a competent witness to give testimony against her husband on the trial of a criminal case in which he is charged with a crime. There, the witness and the defendant had been divorced prior to the time of the trial but the court did not place its decision upon that basis. Instead, the court expressly placed its decision upon the underlying ground that a wife is a competent witness for the government in a criminal case in which her husband is being tried for a criminal offense; and we are content to follow that case without any effort to amplify or elucidate further its undergirding philosophy.

But let it be assumed for the moment that the witness was not competent to give testimony against her husband. Laying aside the testimony which the government elicited from the witness, these facts were established upon the trial. The prosecutrix, a girl seventeen years of age, lived with her parents near Dogpatch, Oklahoma, a place consisting of two buildings, one a tavern in which she worked as a waitress and the other a dance hall owned by appellant. In November, 1955, the prosecutrix told appellant that she wanted a...