This case presents the question whether the United States Government may compel testimony from an unwilling witness, who invokes the Fifth Amendment privilege against compulsory self-incrimination, by conferring on the witness immunity from use of the compelled testimony in subsequent criminal proceedings, as well as immunity from use of evidence derived from the testimony.
Petitioners were subpoenaed to appear before a United States grand jury in the Central District of California on February 4, 1971. The Government believed that petitioners were likely to assert their Fifth Amendment privilege. Prior to the scheduled appearances, the Government applied to the District Court for an order directing petitioners to answer questions and produce evidence before the grand jury under a grant of immunity conferred pursuant to 18 U. S. C. §§ 6002-6003. Petitioners opposed issuance of the order, contending primarily that the scope of the immunity provided by the statute was not coextensive with the scope of the privilege against self-incrimination, and therefore was not sufficient to supplant the privilege and compel their testimony. The District Court rejected this contention, and ordered petitioners to appear before the grand jury and answer its questions under the grant of immunity.
Petitioners appeared but refused to answer questions, asserting their privilege against compulsory self-incrimination. They were brought before the District Court, and each persisted in his refusal to answer the grand jury's questions, notwithstanding the grant of immunity. The court found both in contempt, and committed them to the custody of the Attorney General until either they answered the grand jury's questions or the term of the grand jury expired.
I
The power of government to compel persons to testify in court or before grand juries and other governmental agencies is firmly established in Anglo-American jurisprudence.
But the power to compel testimony is not absolute. There are a number of exemptions from the testimonial duty,
Immunity statutes, which have historical roots deep in Anglo-American jurisprudence,
II
Petitioners contend, first, that the Fifth Amendment's privilege against compulsory self-incrimination, which is that "[n]o person . . . shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself," deprives Congress of power to enact laws that compel self-incrimination, even if complete immunity from prosecution is granted prior to the compulsion of the incriminatory testimony. In other words, petitioners assert that no immunity statute, however drawn, can afford a lawful basis for compelling incriminatory testimony. They ask us to reconsider and overrule Brown v. Walker, 161 U.S. 591 (1896), and Ullmann v. United States, supra, decisions that uphold the constitutionality of immunity statutes.
III
Petitioners' second contention is that the scope of immunity provided by the federal witness immunity statute, 18 U. S. C. § 6002, is not coextensive with the scope of the Fifth Amendment privilege against compulsory self-incrimination, and therefore is not sufficient to supplant the privilege and compel testimony over a claim of the privilege. The statute provides that when a witness is compelled by district court order to testify over a claim of the privilege:
The constitutional inquiry, rooted in logic and history, as well as in the decisions of this Court, is whether the immunity granted under this statute is coextensive with the scope of the privilege.
Petitioners draw a distinction between statutes that provide transactional immunity and those that provide, as does the statute before us, immunity from use and derivative use.
Sixteen days after the Counselman decision, a new immunity bill was introduced by Senator Cullom,
The statute's explicit proscription of the use in any criminal case of "testimony or other information compelled under the order (or any information directly or indirectly derived from such testimony or other information)" is consonant with Fifth Amendment standards. We hold that such immunity from use and derivative use is coextensive with the scope of the privilege against self-incrimination, and therefore is sufficient to compel testimony over a claim of the privilege. While a grant of immunity must afford protection commensurate with that afforded by the privilege, it need not be broader. Transactional immunity, which accords full immunity from prosecution for the offense to which the compelled testimony relates, affords the witness considerably broader protection than does the Fifth Amendment privilege. The privilege has never been construed to mean that one who invokes it cannot subsequently be prosecuted. Its sole concern is to afford protection against being "forced to give testimony leading to the infliction of `penalties affixed to . . . criminal acts.' "
Our holding is consistent with the conceptual basis of Counselman. The Counselman statute, as construed by the Court, was plainly deficient in its failure to
that it:
and that it:
The basis of the Court's decision was recognized in Ullmann v. United States, 350 U.S. 422 (1956), in which the Court reiterated that the Counselman statute was insufficient:
See also Arndstein v. McCarthy, 254 U.S. 71, 73 (1920). The broad language in Counselman relied upon by petitioners
In Murphy v. Waterfront Comm'n, 378 U.S. 52 (1964), the Court carefully considered immunity from use of compelled testimony and evidence derived therefrom. The Murphy petitioners were subpoenaed to testify at a hearing conducted by the Waterfront Commission of New York Harbor. After refusing to answer certain questions on the ground that the answers might tend to incriminate them, petitioners were granted immunity
The issue before the Court in Murphy was whether New Jersey and New York could compel the witnesses, whom these States had immunized from prosecution under their laws, to give testimony that might then be used to convict them of a federal crime. Since New Jersey and New York had not purported to confer immunity from federal prosecution, the Court was faced with the question what limitations the Fifth Amendment privilege imposed on the prosecutorial powers of the Federal Government, a nonimmunizing sovereign. After undertaking an examination of the policies and purposes of the privilege, the Court overturned the rule that one jurisdiction within our federal structure may compel a witness to give testimony which could be used to convict him of a crime in another jurisdiction.
The Court emphasized that this rule left the state witness and the Federal Government, against which the witness had immunity only from the use of the compelled testimony and evidence derived therefrom, "in substantially the same position as if the witness had claimed his privilege in the absence of a state grant of immunity." Ibid.
It is true that in Murphy the Court was not presented with the precise question presented by this case, whether a jurisdiction seeking to compel testimony may do so by granting only use and derivative-use immunity, for New Jersey and New York had granted petitioners transactional immunity. The Court heretofore has not
IV
Although an analysis of prior decisions and the purpose of the Fifth Amendment privilege indicates that use and derivative-use immunity is coextensive with the privilege, we must consider additional arguments advanced by petitioners against the sufficiency of such immunity. We start from the premise, repeatedly affirmed by this Court, that an appropriately broad immunity grant is compatible with the Constitution.
Petitioners argue that use and derivative-use immunity will not adequately protect a witness from various possible incriminating uses of the compelled testimony: for example, the prosecutor or other law enforcement officials may obtain leads, names of witnesses, or other information not otherwise available that might result in a prosecution. It will be difficult and perhaps impossible, the argument goes, to identify, by testimony or cross-examination, the subtle ways in which the compelled testimony may disadvantage a witness, especially in the jurisdiction granting the immunity.
This argument presupposes that the statute's prohibition
This total prohibition on use provides a comprehensive safeguard, barring the use of compelled testimony as an "investigatory lead,"
A person accorded this immunity under 18 U. S. C. § 6002, and subsequently prosecuted, is not dependent for the preservation of his rights upon the integrity and good faith of the prosecuting authorities. As stated in Murphy:
This burden of proof, which we reaffirm as appropriate, is not limited to a negation of taint; rather, it imposes on the prosecution the affirmative duty to prove that the evidence it proposes to use is derived from a legitimate source wholly independent of the compelled testimony.
The statutory proscription is analogous to the Fifth Amendment requirement in cases of coerced confessions.
There can be no justification in reason or policy for holding that the Constitution requires an amnesty grant where, acting pursuant to statute and accompanying safeguards, testimony is compelled in exchange for immunity from use and derivative use when no such amnesty is required where the government, acting without colorable right, coerces a defendant into incriminating himself.
We conclude that the immunity provided by 18 U. S. C. § 6002 leaves the witness and the prosecutorial authorities in substantially the same position as if the witness had claimed the Fifth Amendment privilege. The immunity therefore is coextensive with the privilege and suffices to supplant it. The judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit accordingly is
Affirmed.
MR. JUSTICE BRENNAN and MR. JUSTICE REHNQUIST took no part in the consideration or decision of this case.
MR. JUSTICE DOUGLAS, dissenting.
The Self-Incrimination Clause says: "No person . . . shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself." I see no answer to the proposition that he is such a witness when only "use" immunity is granted.
My views on the question of the scope of immunity that is necessary to force a witness to give up his guarantee
In Counselman v. Hitchcock, 142 U.S. 547, 586, the Court adopted the transactional immunity test: "In view of the constitutional provision, a statutory enactment, to be valid, must afford absolute immunity against future prosecution for the offense to which the question relates." Id., at 586. In Brown v. Walker, 161 U.S. 591, a case involving another federal prosecution, the immunity statute provided that the witness would be protected "on account of any transaction . . . concerning which he may testify." Id., at 594. The Court held that the immunity offered was coterminous with the privilege and that the witness could therefore be compelled to testify, a ruling that made "transactional immunity" part of the fabric of our constitutional law. Ullmann v. United States, supra, at 438.
This Court, however, apparently believes that Counselman and its progeny were overruled sub silentio in Murphy v. Waterfront Comm'n, 378 U.S. 52. Murphy involved state witnesses, granted transactional immunity under state law, who refused to testify for fear of subsequent federal prosecution. We held that the testimony in question could be compelled, but that the Federal Government would be barred from using any of the testimony, or its fruits, in a subsequent federal prosecution.
Murphy overruled, not Counselman, but Feldman v. United States, 322 U.S. 487, which had held "that one jurisdiction within our federal structure may compel a witness to give testimony which could be used to convict him of a crime in another jurisdiction." Murphy v. Waterfront Comm'n, supra, at 77. But Counselman,
Moreover, as MR. JUSTICE BRENNAN has pointed out, the threat of future prosecution
None of these factors apply when the threat of prosecution is from the jurisdiction seeking to compel the testimony, which is the situation we faced in Counselman, and which we face today. The irrelevance of Murphy to such a situation was made clear in Albertson v. Subversive Activities Control Board, 382 U.S. 70, in which the Court struck down an immunity statute because it failed to measure up to the standards set forth in Counselman. Inasmuch as no interjurisdictional problems presented themselves, Murphy was not even cited. That is further proof that Murphy was not thought significantly to
If, as some have thought, the Bill of Rights contained only "counsels of moderation" from which courts and legislatures could deviate according to their conscience or discretion, then today's contraction of the Self-Incrimination Clause of the Fifth Amendment would be understandable. But that has not been true, starting with Chief Justice Marshall's opinion in United States v. Burr,
The Court said in Hale v. Henkel, 201 U.S. 43, 67, that "if the criminality has already been taken away, the Amendment ceases to apply." In other words, the immunity granted is adequate if it operates as a complete pardon for the offense. Brown v. Walker, 161 U. S., at 595. That is the true measure of the Self-Incrimination Clause. As MR. JUSTICE BRENNAN has stated: "[U]se immunity literally misses half the point of the privilege, for it permits the compulsion without removing the criminality." Piccirillo v. New York, supra, at 567 (dissenting).
As MR. JUSTICE BRENNAN has also said:
When we allow the prosecution to offer only "use" immunity we allow it to grant far less than it has taken away. For while the precise testimony that is compelled may not be used, leads from that testimony may
I would adhere to Counselman v. Hitchcock and hold that this attempt to dilute the Self-Incrimination Clause is unconstitutional.
MR. JUSTICE MARSHALL, dissenting.
Today the Court holds that the United States may compel a witness to give incriminating testimony, and subsequently prosecute him for crimes to which that testimony relates. I cannot believe the Fifth Amendment permits that result. See Piccirillo v. New York, 400 U.S. 548, 552 (1971) (BRENNAN, J., dissenting from dismissal of certiorari).
The Fifth Amendment gives a witness an absolute right to resist interrogation, if the testimony sought would tend to incriminate him. A grant of immunity
The Court recognizes that an immunity statute must be tested by that standard, that the relevant inquiry is whether it "leaves the witness and the prosecutorial authorities in substantially the same position as if the witness had claimed the Fifth Amendment privilege." Ante, at 462. I assume, moreover, that in theory that test would be met by a complete ban on the use of the compelled testimony, including all derivative use, however remote and indirect. But I cannot agree that a ban on use will in practice be total, if it remains open for the government to convict the witness on the basis of evidence derived from a legitimate independent source. The Court asserts that the witness is adequately protected by a rule imposing on the government a heavy burden of proof if it would establish the independent character of evidence to be used against the witness. But in light of the inevitable uncertainties of the factfinding process, see Speiser v. Randall, 357 U.S. 513, 525 (1958), a greater margin of protection is required in order to provide a reliable guarantee that the witness
I do not see how it can suffice merely to put the burden of proof on the government. First, contrary to the Court's assertion, the Court's rule does leave the witness "dependent for the preservation of his rights upon the integrity and good faith of the prosecuting authorities." Ante, at 460. For the information relevant to the question of taint is uniquely within the knowledge of the prosecuting authorities. They alone are in a position to trace the chains of information and investigation that lead to the evidence to be used in a criminal prosecution. A witness who suspects that his compelled testimony was used to develop a lead will be hard pressed indeed to ferret out the evidence necessary to prove it. And of course it is no answer to say he need not prove it, for though the Court puts the burden of proof on the government, the government will have no difficulty in meeting its burden by mere assertion if the witness produces no contrary evidence. The good faith of the prosecuting authorities is thus the sole safeguard of the witness' rights. Second, even their good faith is not a sufficient safeguard. For the paths of information through the investigative bureaucracy may well be long and winding, and even a prosecutor acting in the best of faith cannot be certain that somewhere in the depths of his investigative apparatus, often including hundreds of employees, there was not some prohibited use of the compelled testimony. Cf. Giglio v. United States, 405 U.S. 150 (1972); Santobello v. New York, 404 U.S. 257 (1971). The Court today sets out a loose net to trap tainted evidence and prevent its use against the witness, but it accepts an intolerably great risk that tainted evidence will in fact slip through that net.
First, because an immunity statute gives constitutional approval to the resulting interrogation, the government is under an obligation here to remove the danger of incrimination completely and absolutely, whereas in the case of the exclusionary rules it may be sufficient to shield the witness from the fruits of the illegal search or interrogation in a partial and reasonably adequate manner. For when illegal police conduct has occurred, the exclusion of evidence does not purport to purge the conduct of its unconstitutional character. The constitutional violation remains, and may provide the basis for other relief, such as a civil action for damages (see 42 U. S. C. § 1983 and Bivens v. Six Agents, 403 U.S. 388 (1971)), or a criminal prosecution of the responsible
Second, because an immunity statute operates in advance of the interrogation, there is room to require a broad grant of transactional immunity without imperiling large numbers of otherwise valid convictions. An exclusionary rule comes into play after the interrogation or search has occurred; and the decision to question or to search is often made in haste, under pressure, by an officer who is not a lawyer. If an unconstitutional interrogation or search were held to create transactional immunity, that might well be regarded as an excessively high price to pay for the "constable's blunder." An immunity statute, on the other hand, creates a framework in which the prosecuting attorney can make a calm and reasoned decision whether to compel testimony and suffer the resulting ban on prosecution, or to forgo the testimony.
For both these reasons it is clear to me that an immunity statute must be tested by a standard far more demanding than that appropriate for an exclusionary rule fashioned to deal with past constitutional violations. Measured by that standard, the statute approved today by the Court fails miserably. I respectfully dissent.
FootNotes
Another notable instance of the early use of immunity legislation is the 1725 impeachment trial of Lord Chancellor Macclesfield. The Lord Chancellor was accused by the House of Commons of the sale of public offices and appointments. In order to compel the testimony of Masters in Chancery who had allegedly purchased their offices from the Lord Chancellor, and who could incriminate themselves by so testifying, Parliament enacted a statute granting immunity to persons then holding office as Masters in Chancery. Lord Chancellor Macclesfield's Trial, 16 How. St. Tr. 767, 1147 (1725). See 8 Wigmore, supra, n. 2, § 2281, at 492. See also Bishop Atterbury's Trial, 16 How. St. Tr. 323, 604-605 (1723). The legislatures in colonial Pennsylvania and New York enacted immunity legislation in the 18th century. See, e. g., Resolution of Jan. 6, 1758, in Votes and Proceedings of the House of Representatives of the Province of Pennsylvania (1682-1776), 6 Pennsylvania Archives (8th series) 4679 (C. Hoban ed. 1935); Law of Mar. 24, 1772, c. 1542, 5 Colonial Laws of New York 351, 353-354; Law of Mar. 9, 1774, c. 1651, id., at 621, 623; Law of Mar. 9, 1774, c. 1655, id., at 639, 641-642. See generally L. Levy, Origins of the Fifth Amendment 359, 384-385, 389, 402-403 (1968). Federal immunity statutes have existed since 1857. Act of Jan. 24, 1857, 11 Stat. 155. For a history of the various federal immunity statutes, see Comment, The Federal Witness Immunity Acts in Theory and Practice: Treading the Constitutional Tightrope, 72 Yale L. J. 1568 (1963); Wendel, Compulsory Immunity Legislation and the Fifth Amendment Privilege: New Developments and New Confusion, 10 St. Louis U. L. Rev. 327 (1966); and National Commission on Reform of Federal Criminal Laws, Working Papers, 1406-1411 (1970).
"We are satisfied that our substitution of immunity from use for immunity from prosecution meets constitutional requirements for overcoming the claim of privilege. Immunity from use is the only consequence flowing from a violation of the individual's constitutional right to be protected from unreasonable searches and seizures, his constitutional right to counsel, and his constitutional right not to be coerced into confessing. The proposed immunity is thus of the same scope as that frequently, even though unintentionally, conferred as the result of constitutional violations by law enforcement officers." Second Interim Report of the National Commission on Reform of Federal Criminal Laws, Mar. 17, 1969, Working Papers of the Commission, 1446 (1970).
The Commission's recommendation was based in large part on a comprehensive study of immunity and the relevant decisions of this Court prepared for the Commission by Prof. Robert G. Dixon, Jr., of the George Washington University Law Center, and transmitted to the President with the recommendations of the Commission. See National Commission on Reform of Federal Criminal Laws, Working Papers, 1405-1444 (1970).
In Adams v. Maryland, 347 U.S. 179, 182 (1954), and in United States v. Murdock, 284 U.S. 141, 149 (1931), the Counselman dictum was referred to as the principle of Counselman. The references were in the context of ancillary points not essential to the decisions of the Court. The Adams Court did note, however, that the Fifth Amendment privilege prohibits the "use" of compelled self-incriminatory testimony. 347 U. S., at 181. In any event, the Court in Ullmann v. United States, 350 U. S., at 436-437, recognized that the rationale of Counselman was that the Counselman statute was insufficient for failure to prohibit the use of evidence derived from compelled testimony. See also Arndstein v. McCarthy, 254 U. S., at 73.
"A coerced confession is as revealing of leads as testimony given in exchange for immunity and indeed is excluded in part because it is compelled incrimination in violation of the privilege. Malloy v. Hogan, [378 U.S. 1, 7-8]; Spano v. New York, 360 U.S. 315; Bram v. United States, 168 U.S. 532." 378 U. S., at 103.
"In Counselman v. Hitchcock, 142 U.S. 547, decided in 1892, the Court held `that no [immunity] statute which leaves the party or witness subject to prosecution after he answers the criminating question put to him, can have the effect of supplanting the privilege. . . ,' and that such a statute is valid only if it supplies `a complete protection from all the perils against which the constitutional prohibition was designed to guard . . .' by affording `absolute immunity against future prosecution for the offence to which the question relates.' Id., at 585-586. Measured by these standards, the immunity granted by § 4 (f) is not complete." 382 U. S., at 80. (Emphasis added.)
Thus, the Albertson Court, which could have struck the statute by employing the test approved today, went well beyond, and measured the statute solely against the more restrictive standards of Counselman.
It is also possible that use immunity might actually have an adverse impact on the administration of justice rather than promote law enforcement. A witness might believe, with good reason, that his "immunized" testimony will inevitably lead to a felony conviction. Under such circumstances, rather than testify and aid the investigation, the witness might decide he would be better off remaining silent even if he is jailed for contempt.
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