<p>From a fellow convicted spy. Ethel still a question but she should have turned him in or testified against him. She died for a traitor.</p>
<p>[AFP:</a> Rosenberg spy case man admits finally to espionage](<a href=“http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5jOoS892HikJSSGgP9v1-wObEdlLQ]AFP:”>http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5jOoS892HikJSSGgP9v1-wObEdlLQ)</p>
<p>I thought we knew this already, from Venona?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Hmmmm . . . so much for “family values,” I guess.</p>
<p>I thought spouses are exempt from testifying against a defendant?</p>
<p>Well, actually, both of the Rosenbergs did testify at their trial - in their own defense.</p>
<p>[Excerpts</a> from the transcript of the Trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg](<a href=“http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/rosenb/ROS_TRIA.HTM]Excerpts”>http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/rosenb/ROS_TRIA.HTM)</p>
<p>But you raise a good question, Marite. Briefly, and I hope accurately, there are two related, but distinct, evidentiary privileges relating to a marital relationship. One is a privilege to refuse to testify against one’s spouse. While this permits a spouse to refuse to testify in this manner, it does not preclude them from doing so - it’s the witness’s choice whether to invoke this privilege or not.</p>
<p>The other marital privilege is one that is invoked not by the witness herself, but by the spouse against whom testimony is to be offered. This privilege is designed to protect someone from having confidential communications with their spouse subsequently used against them. Under this privilege, and in this particular case, if Ethel and her lawyers had decided that her best chance of beating the death penalty was to cut a deal with the prosecution and testify against Julius (and if this is the strategy that Ethel had decided to pursue), Julius and his lawyers might well have been able to keep the prosecution from introducing at least some of her proposed testimony at trial, insofar as it pertained to things that Julius had said to Ethel under circumstances that would trigger the application of this privilege. However, while I don’t know much about the facts of this case, I can imagine various sets of circumstances under which Ethel still would have been able to provide incriminating testimony at trial, as it would not have fallen within the scope of this privilege (such as testimony re their contacts with other people, things that other people said in the presence of both of them, etc.). (All of this, of course, presumes that at least Julius, if not both of them, was in fact guilty.)</p>
<p>(One more potential wrinkle here: “The privileges may also be suspended where both spouses are joint participants in a crime, depending on the law of the jurisdiction.”)</p>
<p>[Spousal</a> privilege - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spousal_privilege]Spousal”>Spousal privilege - Wikipedia)</p>
<p>Thanks, epistrophy!</p>
<p>I’m no expert on the case, but have read fitfully about it over the last two decades. There has been evidence for quite a while that Julius was guilty. It is something that his sons (who took the name of Meeropol) took a while to absorb, but absorb it they did, eventually. I believe, however, that there is also a claim that Ethel was framed. In two ways: in the police way, as in “I was framed,” and because of her gender. She probably knew about her husband’s and brother’s activities but did not deserve the death penalty.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>In application, the line separating what’s criminal behavior from what isn’t is not always as clear and distinct as we might think (or like). Mere knowledge that someone else is engaged in criminal activity is never enough to make someone liable. (Yes, as with almost anything in the law, there might be an exception or two to this general rule, but if so they’re extremely narrow.) However, for a prosecutor, or judge, or juror, the distance, inferentially, from mere knowledge to purposeful participation is often extremely short. What this means, in practice, is that if someone can be shown to have known about another person’s criminal activity, they may well be convicted (under principles of accountability or conspiracy, if nothing else), whether actually guilty or not, unless they are able to present extremely persuasive evidence to show that, yes, they knew about X’s criminal activity but no, they did not, themselves, in any way commit to the criminal venture or participate in it. In other words, under these circumstances the burden of proof, in practice if not in theory, tends to shift to a defendant to prove her own innocence.</p>
<p>“Hmmmm . . . so much for “family values,” I guess.”</p>
<p>When it comes to the nation vs family I have to go with the nation. We are not talking ordinary crime here but crimes against the entire country.</p>
<p>Thanks for elucidating this point, epistrophy!</p>