Husbands and wives may be introduced by each other as witnesses in all cases, civil or criminal, and shall be competent witnesses in their own behalf, as against each other, in all controversies between them. Either spouse is a competent witness and may be compelled to testify against the other in any criminal prosecution of either husband or wife for a criminal act against any child, for contributing to the neglect or delinquency of a child, or desertion or nonsupport of children under the age of sixteen (16) years, or abandonment of children. But in all other instances where either of them is a party litigant the other shall not be competent as a witness and shall not be required to answer interrogatories or to make discovery of any matters involved in any such other instances without the consent of both.
Miss. Code Ann. § 13-1-5
Competency of husband and wife
Applied in 30 court decisions — leading case Trammel v. United States (1980)
Most recently applied in 156 So. 3d 813 - Sandlin v. State (October 2013)
Codes, 1857, ch. 61, art. 193; 1871, §§ 759, 760; 1880, § 1601; 1892, § 1739; 1906, § 1916; Hemingway’s 1917, § 1576; 1930, § 1528; 1942, § 1689; Laws, 1928, ch. 35; Laws, 1954,…
How often courts cite this section
Court decisions citing this, by year. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.
Current official text: Mississippi Code (LexisNexis). Digitized from the UniCourt Code Improvement Commission public-domain capture. Reproduced from public-domain Mississippi statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.