The husband or wife of any respondent in a criminal prosecution, offering himself or herself as a witness, shall not be excluded from testifying because he or she is the husband or wife of the respondent.
R.I. Gen. Laws § 12-17-10
Defendant’s spouse as witness
Applied in 3 court decisions — leading case Trammel v. United States (1980)
Most recently applied in United States v. Breton (January 2014)
C.P.A. 1905, § 397; G.L. 1909, ch. 292, § 45; G.L. 1923, ch. 342, § 45; G.L. 1938, ch. 537, § 17; G.L. 1956, § 12-17-10.
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.
Official source: Rhode Island General Assembly. Reproduced from public-domain Rhode Island statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.