In Hagez v. State, 110 Md. App. 194, 676 A.2d 992 (1996), the defendant was charged with murder in the shooting death of a man inside the witness's motel room. At the time of the crime, the defendant and the witness were a divorced man and woman. There was circumstantial evidence tending to show that the victim was romantically involved with the witness, i.e., that the shooting happened in the context of a love triangle. Before the grand jury, the witness testified about the circumstances of the shooting. A few days before trial, she and the defendant remarried. When the State called the witness to testify at trial, she claimed the spousal privilege. Even after the trial court ruled that the privilege did not apply, she refused to answer, invoking the privilege anyway. The Court held that, assuming the spousal privilege was not properly invoked, and therefore the witness's refusal to testify was not legally justified, the trial court nevertheless erred in permitting the prosecutor to ask the witness (over repeated objections) a long, fact-laden series of leading questions, knowing she would respond to each one by invoking, albeit improperly, the spousal privilege. The Court observed that the prosecutor's extended inquiry was but an attempt to put before the jury, in question form, information that was not otherwise available as admissible evidence, and thereby "to construct its case from inferences derived from its own questions." Id. at 222. The Court concluded that the prosecutor's testimonial questions that suggested answers not only by their leading form but also by raising the improper inference, from the witness's claim of the spousal privilege, that she had information damaging to him, added "critical weight" to the State's case. Id. at 222.