## Facts

- Mark Allan Anderson, a 37-year-old farmer and coach in Keota, Iowa, hired J.D., age 15, to work on his farm in summer 1998.
- Anderson and J.D. had sexual intercourse on four occasions, generally in a camper located on the farm.
- In 1999, after a report of inappropriate contact, J.D. disclosed the sexual relationship to her parents and later gave detailed statements to law enforcement, a school abuse investigator, and child protective services.
- At trial, J.D. testified to the four incidents and described the camper’s interior and Anderson’s naked body.
- The State called Anderson’s ex-wife, who (1) corroborated the camper and physical descriptions based on her observations and (2) recounted a marital conversation in which Anderson made incriminating statements after she confronted him about J.D.
- Over Anderson’s objection, the district court admitted the ex-wife’s account of the marital conversation under a statutory child-abuse exception to the marital communications privilege.
- A jury convicted Anderson of two counts of third-degree sexual abuse, and the district court entered judgment and sentence.

## Issues

1. Whether the marital communications privilege barred the ex-wife’s testimony about confidential marital communications.
2. Whether the statutory child-abuse exception applied in a criminal prosecution for statutory sexual abuse where the defendant was not a “person responsible for the care of the child” under Iowa’s child-abuse scheme.
3. Whether admitting privileged marital communications required reversal and a new trial.

## Decision

- The Iowa Supreme Court held the district court erred by admitting the ex-wife’s testimony about confidential marital communications.
- The child-abuse exception did not apply because the prosecution was not a child-abuse proceeding under the statutory framework and Anderson was not a statutorily defined caretaker of J.D.
- The court distinguished between admissible spousal testimony based on observations (not privileged) and inadmissible testimony recounting confidential marital communications (privileged).
- The court reversed Anderson’s convictions and sentence and remanded for a new trial.

## Legal Principles

- Iowa’s marital communications privilege protects confidential communications made between spouses during marriage; it does not protect a spouse’s independent observations or noncommunicative facts.
- Statutory exceptions to evidentiary privileges are construed narrowly and will not be expanded beyond clear legislative language.
- The child-abuse exception to confidentiality and privilege rules in Iowa’s child-welfare statutes is tied to the statutory definition and procedures for “child abuse,” which focus on abuse by a “person responsible for the care of the child.”
- A criminal statutory-rape prosecution involving a non-caretaker defendant does not, without more, trigger the child-abuse exception to override the marital communications privilege.

## Conclusion

The court ruled that confidential marital communications were improperly admitted because the child-abuse exception did not extend to a statutory sexual-abuse prosecution against a defendant who was not legally responsible for the child’s care, requiring reversal and a new trial.


State v. Anderson, 636 N.W.2d 26 (Iowa 2001)