Mathews v. Yerex

The only question presented by this case is whether the wife during the continuance of the state of marriage is a competent witness for her husband in a suit for criminal conversation. By the common law she was incompetent, and she still remains so unless the rule has been abrogated by the Legislature, and we think this has not been done.

*362The enactments to remove disabilities and liberate the law of evidence from many of its ancient fetters must be considered together. They compose a common scheme intended to prescribe in more or less general terms the doing away of common-law rules of…