United States v. Estes

Kenneth Estes (defendant) was prosecuted for lying to a grand jury about a theft. His estranged wife, Lydia, testified before the grand jury and at trial that Kenneth had come home with a bag of money and told her he had stolen it; she then helped him count, hide, and launder the stolen cash. Kenneth objected that all of Lydia's testimony -- both about his confession and about her own later actions -- involved privileged confidential marital communications and should have been excluded. The jury convicted him, and he appealed to the Second Circuit.