Sham Marriages and Spousal Compellability
| Author | Roderick Munday |
| DOI | 10.1177/002201830106500408 |
| Published date | 01 August 2001 |
| Date | 01 August 2001 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
Sham
Marriages
and
Spousal
Compellability
Dr Roderick Munday*
Outside
on
the
pavement
he restrained himself
with
immense
difficulty
and
remembered
bitterly
that
he still
had
a
part
to
play-they
couldn't
make a wife give evidence.
An
important
sub-plot
running
through
Graham
Greene's
'entertain-
ment',
Brighton
Rock,
first
published
in
1938,
is
the
marriage
contracted
by
the
calculating,
17
-year-old
gangster,
Pinkie.
He
weds
a
16-year-old
waitress,
Rose,
purely
because
she
is
privy
to
facts
which
could
implicate
him
in a
murder
that
the
authorities
have
hitherto
taken
for a
death
by
natural
causes.
Pinkie
first
takes
legal
advice
from
the
seedy
solicitor,
Drewitt,
a
man
'aged
in
many
law
courts,
with
many
victories
more
damaging
than
defeats
...
deprecating,
discreet,
sympathetic,
and
as
tough
as
leather'.
Pinkie
asks:
'But
if we give
our
ages
wrong
are
we married all
right-legally?'
'Hard
and
fast:
'The police
wouldn't
be able to call
the
girl-?'
'In
evidence against
you?
Not
without
her
consent:
Secure
in:
this
knowledge,
Pinkie
negotiates
with
Rose's
parents,
and
purchases
their
consent
to
their
daughter's
marrying
for 15
guineas.
After
a
perfunctory,
soulless
registry
office
wedding,
the
union
is
con-
summated.
But
Pinkie's
sale
motive
for
marrying-not
Rose's,
how-
ever-is
to
save
his
own
neck,
even
to
the
extent
of
trying
to
induce
Rose
to
shoot
herself
a
few
days
afterwards.
* * *
Section
80
of
the
Police
and
Criminal
Evidence
1984,
as
amended
by
the
Youth
Justice
and
Criminal
Evidence
Act
1999,
so
far
as
relevant,
now
reads:
(2A)
In
any
proceedings
the
wife or
husband
of a person charged in
the
proceedings shall, subject to subsection (4) below, be
compellable-
(b) to give evidence for
the
prosecution
but
only
in respect of
any
specified offence
with
which
any
person is charged in
the
proceedings.
(3) In relation to
the
wife or
husband
of a person charged in
any
proceedings, an offence is a specified offence for
the
purposes of subsection
(2A)
above
if-
(a) it involves an assault
on,
or
injury
or a
threat
of injury to,
the
wife
or
husband
or a
person
who
was at
the
material time
under
the
age
of 16;
•Peterhouse, Cambridge.
336
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