## Facts

- Kenneth L. Estes, an armored car driver, was investigated for theft of about $55,000 from the armored car he drove.
- Estes testified before a grand jury and denied committing the theft, leading to a federal perjury charge.
- After the theft, Estes returned home with a bag of money and privately told his wife, Lydia, that he had stolen it.
- Lydia then assisted Estes by counting, hiding, laundering, and spending portions of the stolen money, making her an accessory after the fact.
- The couple later divorced; Lydia received immunity and cooperated with investigators, including recording conversations with Estes.
- At Estes’s perjury trial in the District of Vermont, Lydia testified about (a) the initial at-home confession and (b) the couple’s later handling and disposition of the stolen money; Estes was convicted of perjury.
- Estes appealed, arguing Lydia’s grand jury and trial testimony should have been excluded under the confidential marital communications privilege.

## Issues

1. Whether the confidential marital communications privilege barred Lydia’s testimony that Estes privately confessed to her at home that he stole the money.
2. Whether the privilege also barred Lydia’s testimony about later communications and conduct involving concealment, laundering, and spending of the stolen proceeds, or whether those fell within an ongoing-criminal-activity exception.

## Decision

- The Second Circuit reversed the perjury conviction.
- The court held that Lydia’s testimony about Estes’s initial private confession was a protected confidential marital communication and should not have been admitted.
- The court held that Lydia’s testimony about the subsequent handling and disposition of the stolen money was admissible because it related to continuing criminal activity in which she participated, placing it outside the privilege.
- Because the prosecution’s perjury case relied substantially on the improperly admitted privileged confession, the conviction could not stand.

## Legal Principles

- The confidential marital communications privilege protects private communications made between spouses during a valid marriage.
- A spouse-to-spouse confession about completed past conduct, made privately and not in furtherance of joint criminal conduct, is within the privilege.
- Communications (and closely related testimony) that further or relate to ongoing criminal activity jointly participated in by spouses are not protected by the privilege.
- Admission of privileged marital communications may require reversal when the privileged evidence materially supports the conviction.

## Conclusion

The court distinguished between a privileged, private marital confession and later spouse-to-spouse communications tied to joint concealment of stolen proceeds, reversing the perjury conviction because the jury heard the protected confession.


United States v. Estes, 793 F.2d 465 (2d Cir. 1986)