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visualops provided excerpt: "There is no privilege under this rule ... in any criminal proceeding in which a prima facie showing is made that the spouses acted jointly in the commission of the crime charged, ..."

This excerpt seems to address cases in which spousal privilege does not apply, whether a marriage has ended in divorce or not.

In the specific case mentioned, each spouse would be entitled to plead the fifth amendment. Perhaps then a grant of immunity to one spouse could then allow testimony to be compelled which might incriminate the other spouse.

I was not aware that spousal privilege required that one of the two be recognized somehow as being innocent of the crime being charged of the other.

Isn't there also a legal constraint on granting immunity to one member of a conspiracy in order to obtain testimony against the other conspirators? I have heard of co-conspirators copping a plea in exchange for testimony, but I thought perhaps that there can be no outright immunity to a co-conspirator.

I vaguely recall during the Watergate era that there was a legal necessity to name Nixon as an "unindicted co-conspirator". Failure to do this had some legal consequences which might have affected the cases of other conspirators. Perhaps a Freeper legal eagle can help out here.

"Isn't there also a legal constraint on granting immunity to one member of a conspiracy in order to obtain testimony against the other conspirators? I have heard of co-conspirators copping a plea in exchange for testimony, but I thought perhaps that there can be no outright immunity to a co-conspirator."
I can't name them off-hand, but I recall several cases where immunity was granted in exchange for testimony.

With regards the spousal priviledge, divorce has no bearing. The crux is that the marital communication in question was intended to be private. This priviledge is extended to the 'communicating' spouse (thus the one who is potentially being testified against), in both civil and criminal cases. The intention of the law as such is to encourage, or at least not discourage, marital communications.

Nixon, hmm, I'm barely remembering, but I think in his case it wasn't pursued to hand down an indictment and charge him with an actual crime. I would imagine some of this is the purview of the prosecutor. He could then be named as a co-conspirator, but not indicted.