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Cite as: 524 U. S. 666 (1998)

685

Opinion of the Court

Rep., at 158. Although this statement, like its counterpart
in East India Co., is unqualiﬁed, neither case is authority
for the proposition that fear of prosecution in foreign courts
implicates the privilege. For in each of these cases, the judi-
cial system to which the witness’s fears related was subject
to the same legislative sovereignty that had created the
courts in which the privilege was claimed.9
In fact, when
these cases were decided, and for years after adoption of the
Fifth Amendment, English authority was silent on whether
fear of prosecution by a foreign nation implicated the privi-
lege, and the Vice-Chancellor so stated in 1851. See King
of the Two Sicilies v. Willcox, 1 Sim. (N. S.) 301, 331, 61 Eng.
Rep. 116, 128 (Ch. 1851) (observing, in the course of an opin-
ion that clearly involved a claim of privilege based on the
fear of prosecution by another sovereign, that there is an
“absence of all authority on the point”).

Murphy, in fact, went on to discuss the case last cited, as
well as a subsequent one. The Murphy majority began by
acknowledging that King of the Two Sicilies was not author-
ity for attacking this Court’s prior view of English law.
378
In an opinion by Lord Cranworth, the Court of
U. S., at 60.
Chancery declined to allow defendants to assert the privilege

9 Further, the courts of both jurisdictions, at least in some cases, recog-
nized the privilege against self-incrimination. East India Co. makes spe-
ciﬁc reference to the fact that the witness’s testimony might be incriminat-
ing under the laws of Calcutta.
1 Ves. sen., at 247, 27 Eng. Rep., at 1011
(“[T]hat he is punishable appears from the case of Omichund v. Barker
[1 Atk. 21, 26 Eng. Rep. 15 (1744)], as a jurisdiction is erected in Calcutta
for criminal facts”). As of 1726, Calcutta was a “presidency town,” which
was subject to the civil jurisdiction of a “mayor’s court.” The mayor’s
court followed the English Rules of Evidence, which would have included
the rule against self-incrimination.
1 Woodroffe & Ameer Ali’s Law of
Evidence in India 13 (P. Ramaswami & S. Rajagopalan eds., 11th ed. 1962).
The ecclesiastical courts of England also recognized something akin to the
privilege at this time in some cases. See Helmholz, Origins of the Privi-
lege Against Self-Incrimination: The Role of the European Ius Commune,
65 N. Y. U. L. Rev. 962, 969–974 (1990) (citing cases heard in ecclesiastical
courts in which the privilege was recognized).