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UNITED STATES v. BALSYS

Breyer, J., dissenting

tice and Ofﬁce of Procurator General of the Republic of Lith-
uania Concerning Cooperation in the Pursuit of War Crimi-
nals, Aug. 3, 1992, App. in No. 96–6144 (CA2), p. 395. As
the Second Circuit reasoned, since the Federal Government
now has a stake in many foreign prosecutions akin to its
stake in state prosecutions, a stake illustrated by this case,
the privilege’s purpose of preventing governmental over-
reaching is served by recognizing the privilege in the former
class of cases, just as it is served in the cases of “cooperative
federalism” identiﬁed by Murphy.
Indeed, experience sug-
gests that the possibility of governmental abuses in cases
like this one—where the United States has an admittedly
keen interest in the later, foreign prosecution—is not totally
speculative. See, e. g., Demjanjuk v. Petrovsky, 10 F. 3d 338
(CA6 1993).

An additional purpose served by the privilege is “our pref-
erence for an accusatorial rather than an inquisitorial system
of criminal justice.” Murphy, supra, at 55. Even if this
systemic value speaks to “domestic arrangements” only,
ante, at 690, the investigation of crime is as much a part
of our “system” of criminal justice as is any later criminal
prosecution. Reﬂecting this fact, the Court has said that
the Fifth Amendment affords individuals protection during
the investigation, as well as the trial, of a crime. See Mi-
randa v. Arizona, 384 U. S. 436 (1966). And the importance
we place in our system of criminal investigation, and the dis-
taste we have for its alternatives, would stand diminished if
an accused were denied the Fifth Amendment’s protections
because the criminal case against him, though built in this
country by our Government, was ultimately to be prosecuted
in another. This is true regardless of whether the “Bill of
Rights was intended to have any effect on the conduct of
foreign proceedings.” Ante, at 701 (Stevens, J., concur-
ring). The Fifth Amendment undeniably “prescribes a rule
of conduct generally to be followed by our Nation’s ofﬁcial-