402 So. 2d 1060
Decided May 8, 1981
Supreme Court of Alabama · decided 1981-05-08
Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know
Decided 1981-05-08
Cited by 14 later decisions — most recently May 2014
14 state decisions
Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.
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¶2I concur with the majority opinion, and only mildly quibble with the use of the word "competency" rather than the word "privilege."
¶3At common law, a husband and wife could not testify against each other, and were thus considered incompetent as a matter of law. The statute, Code 1975, § 12-21-227, removed this incompetency and at the same time granted either spouse the privilege of testifying or not against the other as they chose. *1062