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UNITED STATES v. BALSYS

Breyer, J., dissenting

of thought. See Muniz, supra, at 595–596 (describing Eng-
lish Star Chamber “wherein suspects were forced to choose
between revealing incriminating private thoughts and for-
saking their oath by committing perjury”); United States v.
Nobles, 422 U. S. 225, 233 (1975) (“The Fifth Amendment
privilege . . . protects ‘a private inner sanctum of individual
feeling and thought and proscribes state intrusion to extract
self-condemnation’ ” (quoting Couch v. United States, 409
Indeed, some have argued that the
U. S. 322, 327 (1973))).
Puritans championed the privilege because, had the 17th-
century state questioned them about their beliefs, they
would have had to answer truthfully and thus suffer condem-
nation. See L. Levy, Origins of the Fifth Amendment 134
(1968) (“If [a Puritan] took the oath and lied, he committed
the unpardonable and cardinal sin of perjury which was sim-
ply not an option for a religious man”). This consideration
may prove less important today domestically, for the First
Amendment protects against the prosecution of thought
crime. But that fact also provides no reason for denying
protection where the prosecution is foreign.

The Court has said that the privilege reﬂects, too, “our
fear that self-incriminating statements will be elicited by in-
humane treatment and abuses.” Murphy, 378 U. S., at 55.
This concern with governmental “overreaching” would ap-
pear implicated as much when the foreseen prosecution is by
another country as when it is by another domestic jurisdic-
tion.
Indeed, the analogy to Murphy’s observation about
“cooperative federalism,” in which State and Federal Gov-
ernments wage “a united front against many types of crimi-
nal activity,” id., at 56, is a powerful one. That is because,
in the 30 years since Murphy, the United States has dramati-
cally increased its level of cooperation with foreign govern-
ments to combat crime. See generally E. Nadelman, Cops
Across Borders: The Internationalization of U. S. Criminal
Law Enforcement (1993); Bassiouni, Policy Considerations
on Inter-State Cooperation in Criminal Matters, 4 Pace Y. B.