Source: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/322/487/
Timestamp: 2019-04-25 09:47:54+00:00

Document:
The Fifth Amendment does not forbid the use in evidence against a defendant in a criminal case in a federal court of self-incriminating testimony theretofore compelled -- under a state immunity statute and without participation by federal officers -- in proceedings in a state court. P. 322 U. S. 492.
Certiorari, 320 U.S. 724, to review the affirmance of a conviction, under § 215 of the Criminal Code, for using the mails to defraud.
by the Circuit Court of Appeals, one judge dissenting. 136 F.2d 394. We brought the case here, 320 U.S. 724, to consider the single question whether the admission of testimony previously given by petitioner in supplementary proceedings in a state court deprived him of the protection of the Fifth Amendment against being "compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself."
In accordance with New York procedure, known as supplementary proceedings, designed to aid in the discovery of assets of a debtor, N.Y. Civil Practice Act, art. 45, Feldman, a judgment debtor, was called as a witness in such proceedings on several occasions between March 31, 1936, and September 29, 1939. Up to March 14, 1938, the New York immunity statute merely provided that a debtor might not be excused from testifying because of self-crimination, but that his testimony could not be used in evidence in a subsequent criminal proceeding against him. N.Y.Laws, 1935, c. 630, § 789. By an Act of March 14, 1938, New York broadened the debtor's immunity so as to free him from prosecution on account of any matter revealed in his testimony. N.Y.Laws 1938, c. 108, § 17, N.Y. Civil Practice Act, § 789. While the earlier provision was in effect, Feldman testified that he was unemployed, paid rent of $250 a month from funds supplied by his family, owed about $340,000, and contemplated immediate bankruptcy. He further testified that, about once a month, his father sent him a book of signed checks, he sent large sums of money to his father by Western Union and destroyed whatever evidence the receipts might offer -- in short, that he was "kiting" his father's checks by sending the proceeds of the later checks to cover those cashed earlier. After March 14, 1938, and down through September, 1939, Feldman again testified in New York supplementary proceedings, giving further details of his bizarre "kiting" practices.
The federal charge was the use of the mails in a scheme to defraud executed by "kiting" checks. In the trial, the Government introduced Feldman's testimony in the New York supplementary proceedings. He did not take the stand. The Government contends that it is unnecessary to decide whether the claim of privilege duly made bars the admission of this testimony. It suggests that testimony given prior to the Act of March 14, 1938, was not compellable, and therefore Feldman waived any privilege in that the New York statute prior to March 14, 1938, did not grant an immunity coextensive with the privilege available under New York law. People ex rel. Lewisohn v. O'Brien, 176 N.Y. 253, 68 N.E. 353. As to testimony under the later New York statute, the Government suggests that it either was not incriminating or was merely repetitive of the earlier voluntary testimony, making its admission, in any event, not prejudicial.
We put to one side all these subtler issues, because we think they cannot dispose of the case. And so we come directly to the main question -- namely, whether the Fifth Amendment prohibited the admission against Feldman upon his trial in a federal court of the earlier testimony given by him in the state courts. While the point has not been formally decided, we deem the answer to be controlled by a long series of decisions expressing basic principles of our federation.
same constitutional purpose -- to maintain inviolate large areas of personal privacy. See Boyd v. United States, 116 U. S. 616, 116 U. S. 630.
"The efforts of the courts and their officials to bring the guilty to punishment, praiseworthy as they are, are not to be aided by the sacrifice of those great principles [of the Fourth and Fifth Amendments] established by years of endeavor and suffering which have resulted in their embodiment in the fundamental law of the land."
Weeks v. United States, 232 U. S. 383, 232 U. S. 393.
"We have already noticed the intimate relation between the two amendments. They throw great light on each other. For the 'unreasonable searches and seizures' condemned in the fourth amendment are almost always made for the purpose of compelling a man to give evidence against himself, which in criminal cases is condemned in the fifth amendment, and compelling a man 'in a criminal case to be a witness against himself,' which is condemned in the fifth amendment, throws light on the question as to what is an 'unreasonable search and seizure' within the meaning of the fourth amendment. And we have been unable to perceive that the seizure of a man's private books and papers to be used in evidence against him is substantially different from compelling him to be a witness against himself."
Boyd v. United States, supra, at 116 U. S. 633.
"the powers of the General Government and of the State, although both exist and are exercised within the same territorial limits, are yet separate and distinct sovereignties, acting separately and independently of each other within their respective spheres. And the sphere of action appropriated to the United States is as far beyond the reach of the judicial process issued by a State judge or a State court as if the line of division was traced by landmarks and monuments visible to the eye."
"The state [antitrust] statute could not, of course, prevent a prosecution of the same party under the United States [antitrust] statute, and it could not prevent the testimony given by the party in the state proceeding from being used against the same person in a Federal court for a violation of the Federal statute, if it could be imagined that such prosecution would be instituted under such circumstances."
ground that it will incriminate him, and also that the lack of state power to give witnesses protection against federal prosecution does not defeat a state immunity statute. The principle established is that full and complete immunity against prosecution by the government compelling the witness to answer is equivalent to the protection furnished by the rule against compulsory self-incrimination."
United States v. Murdock, 284 U. S. 141, 284 U. S. 149.
And so, while evidence secured through unreasonable search and seizure by federal officials is inadmissible in a federal prosecution, Weeks v. United States, supra; Gouled v. United States, 255 U. S. 298; Agnello v. United States, 269 U. S. 20, incriminating documents so secured by state officials without participation by federal officials but turned over for their use are admissible in a federal prosecution. Burdeau v. McDowell, 256 U. S. 465. Relevant testimony is not barred from use in a criminal trial in a federal court unless wrongfully acquired by federal officials.
"If knowledge of them [the facts] is gained from an independent source, they may be proved like any others, but the knowledge gained by the Government's own wrong cannot be used by it. . . ."
Silverthorne Lumber Co. v. United States, 251 U. S. 385, 251 U. S. 392. This Court has refused to draw nice distinctions as to when wrongful acquisition of evidence by state agencies was also a federal enterprise. When a representative of the United States is a participant in the extortion of evidence or in its illicit acquisition, he is charged with exercising the authority of the United States. Evidence so secured may be regained, Go-Bart Co. v. United States, 282 U. S. 344, and its admission, after timely motion for its suppression, vitiates a conviction. Byars v. United States, 273 U. S. 28.
here is not seeking to benefit by evidence which it extorted. It had no power either to compel testimony in the state court or to forestall such disclosure as a means of avoiding possible interference with the enforcement of the federal penal code. Whether testimony in a New York court should be compelled in exchange for immunity from prosecution under the penal laws of New York is for New York to say. For what purposes the United States may deem the disclosure of testimony more important than prosecution for federal crimes is for Congress to say. It has seen fit to make the exchange very sparingly. See United States v. Monia, 317 U. S. 424. Certainly it is not for New York to determine when, because it suits its local policy to employ testimonial compulsion, it will relieve from federal prosecution "for or on account of any transaction, matter or thing concerning which" a New York court may have seen fit to require testimony. Such would be the practical result of sustaining petitioner's claim. The immunity from prosecution, like the privilege against testifying which it supplants, pertains to a prosecution in the same jurisdiction. Otherwise, the criminal law of the United States would be at the hazard of carelessness or connivance in some petty civil litigation in any state court, quite beyond the reach even of the most alert watchfulness by law officers of the Government. See Nardone v. United States, 308 U. S. 338.
federal criminal laws and state and federal immunity provisions. There are, as we have already seen, ample safeguards. If a federal agency were to use a state court as an instrument for compelling disclosures for federal purposes, the doctrine of the Byars case, supra, as well as that of McNabb v. United States, 318 U. S. 332, afford adequate resources against such an evasive disregard of the privilege against self-crimination. See United States v. Saline Bank, 1 Pet. 100; United States v. McRae, L.R. 3 Ch.App. 79. Nothing in this record brings either doctrine into play.
MR. JUSTICE MURPHY and MR. JUSTICE JACKSON took no part in the consideration or decision of this case.
"any compulsory discovery by extorting the party's oath . . . is contrary to the principles of a free government. It is abhorrent . . . to the instincts of an American. It may suit the purposes of despotic power, but it cannot abide the pure atmosphere of political liberty and personal freedom."
"shocking to the universal sense of justice" and "offensive to the common and fundamental ideas of fairness and right," and therefore, under past decisions of the Court, incompatible with Constitutional due process of law. Betts v. Brady, 316 U. S. 455, 316 U. S. 462, 316 U. S. 473. Or at least, even if the use of testimony extracted by compulsory discovery be held consistent with due process, adherence to the belief expressed by the Boyd case should require the Court to hold that, absent a conflicting Act of Congress, "a decent regard for the duty of courts as agencies of justice and custodians of liberty forbids that men should be convicted upon evidence" so obtained. McNabb v. United States, 318 U. S. 332, 318 U. S. 347. But I do not base my dissent upon judicially defined concepts of procedural due process, or upon judge-made rules of evidence. The Bill of Rights, proposed in 1789 by the First Congress convened under our Constitution and quickly ratified by the States in 1791, declares in part that "[n]o person . . . shall be compelled in any Criminal Case to be a witness against himself." Amend. V, Constitution of the United States. Never since the Bill of Rights was adopted, until today, has this Court sustained a single conviction for a federal offense which rested on self-incriminatory testimony forced from the accused. I cannot agree to do so now.
court, rather than the state court. [Footnote 2] This would have been true whether the federal court proceeding had been noncriminal or criminal, [Footnote 3] and whether Feldman had testified as a mere witness or as a defendant. [Footnote 4] Nor could his forced testimony have been used had it been compelled by federal officers outside of a courtroom; [Footnote 5] by foreign detectives in a foreign country inquiring into commission of an offense against the United States committed on the high seas; [Footnote 6] or by state officers interrogating a suspect for the purpose of enforcing a federal law. [Footnote 7] There is, then, no sanction in the precedents of this Court for viewing the Fifth Amendment's prohibition against compelled testimony with grudging eyes and reducing its scope to the narrowest plausible limits. As the decisions reflect, the previously declared attitude of the Court toward this prohibition has been that it "must have a broad construction in favor of the right which it was intended to secure." Counselman v. Hitchcock, 142 U. S. 547, 142 U. S. 562; McCarthy v. Arndstein, 266 U. S. 34.
in a federal court on words he was forced to speak. The circumstances under which it is now held that men can be forced to convict themselves by their own testimony are, (1) that the testimony was compelled by state officers, and (2) that the state officers were not acting to enforce federal law. These slight variations in the techniques of compulsion are considered a sufficient excuse to escape the Fifth Amendment's command against the use of compelled testimony by federal courts. Surely such a holding is not to be justified by the language of that Amendment. Within its sweeping prohibition are found no exceptions based upon the persons who compel, their purpose in compelling, or their method of compelling, whether by threats of imprisonment, physical torture, or other means. Testimony is no less compelled because a state, rather than a federal officer, compels it, or because the state officer appears to be primarily interested at the moment in enforcing a state, rather than a federal, law.
from the other specific protections afforded the individual by the Bill of Rights. The founders of our federal government were too close to oppressions and persecutions of the unorthodox, the unpopular, and the less influential to trust even elected representatives with unlimited powers of control over the individual. From their distrust were derived the first ten amendments, designed, as a whole, to "limit and qualify the powers of Government," to define "cases in which the Government ought not to act, or to act only in a particular mode," and to protect unpopular minorities from oppressive majorities. 1 Annals 437. The first of the ten amendments erected a Constitutional shelter for the people's liberties of religion, speech, press, and assembly. This amendment reflects the faith that a good society is not static, but advancing, and that the fullest possible interchange of ideas and beliefs is essential to attainment of this goal. The proponents of the First Amendment, committed to this faith, were determined that every American should possess an unrestrained freedom to express his views, however odious they might be to vested interests whose power they might challenge.
which they certainly intended that no person could be punished except for a violation of definite and validly enacted laws of the land, and after a trial conducted in accordance with the specific procedural safeguards written in the Bill of Rights. [Footnote 15] If occasionally these safeguards worked to the advantage of an ordinary criminal, that was a price they were willing to pay for the freedom they cherished. And one of the specific procedural safeguards which they inserted to shield the individual was the prohibition against compulsion of self-incriminatory testimony.
It is impossible for me to reconcile today's restrictive interpretation of the prohibition against compelled self-incrimination with the principle of broad construction which this Court heretofore has deemed essential to full preservation of the basic safeguards of liberty specifically enumerated in the Bill of Rights. The protections explicitly afforded the individual by the Bill of Rights represent a large part of the characteristics which distinguish free from totalitarian government. Under our Constitutional system, the privileges it embodies and the rights it secures were intended to be above and beyond the power of any branch of government to mutilate or destroy. We have no assurance that the fears of those who drafted and adopted our Bill of Rights were groundless, nor that the reasons for those fears no longer exist. Ancient evils historically associated with the possession of unqualified power to impose criminal punishment on individuals have a dangerous habit of reappearing when tried safeguards are removed.
reasoning of these decisions, as well as the separate language and history of the two Amendments. See Boyd v. United States, supra; Counselman v. Hitchcock, supra; Brown v. Walker, 161 U. S. 591; VIII Wigmore on Evidence, Third Ed. pp. 276-304, 368. Nothing this Court has said with regard to the Fourth Amendment requires that we now open the door which the Fifth Amendment, in 1791, closed to compelled self-incrimination.
MR. JUSTICE DOUGLAS and MR. JUSTICE RUTLEDGE join in this opinion.
And see Jack v. Kansas, 199 U. S. 372, where this Court disposed of an argument that a Kansas statute unconstitutionally compelled Jack to confess his violations of a federal criminal statute with the assertion that "[w]e do not believe . . . such evidence would be availed of by the Government for such purpose." Id., 199 U. S. 381-382. In an earlier case, Brown v. Walker, 161 U. S. 591, this Court thought that the likelihood that state prosecutors would use testimony compelled by the federal government was "so improbable that no reasonable man would suffer it to influence his conduct." Id., 161 U. S. 606-608. But see Ensign v. Pennsylvania, 227 U. S. 592.
McCarthy v. Arndstein, 266 U. S. 34, and see Bram v. United States, 168 U. S. 532; Ziang Sung Wan v. United States, 266 U. S. 1; cf. Boyd v. United States, 116 U. S. 616.
McCarthy v. Arndstein, supra, Note 2 pp. 266 U. S. 40-41; Counselman v. Hitchcock, 142 U. S. 547, 142 U. S. 562. See also United States ex rel. Bilokumsky v. Tod, 263 U. S. 149; United States ex rel. Vajtauer v. Commissioner of Immigration, 273 U. S. 103.
Counselman v. Hitchcock, 142 U. S. 547.
See Hale v. Henkel, 201 U. S. 43, and United States v. Murdock, 284 U. S. 141, holding it enough that the United States grant immunity from prosecution for federal crimes; but see, contra, 26 U. S. Saline Bank, 1 Pet. 100; Ballmann v. Fagin, 200 U. S. 186. Had the Court in the Murdock case, supra, accepted the contention that the federal government must grant an immunity from state as well as federal prosecution, it would inevitably have been faced with the problem of the federal power to interfere with enforcement of state laws through the device of granting immunity from state prosecution to witnesses in federal proceedings -- a problem replete with both practical and legal difficulties. See J.A.C. Grant, Immunity From Compulsory Self-Incrimination In A Federal System of Government, 9 Temple L.Q. 57 and 194, 207-211.
Compare Jack v. Kansas, supra, Note 1 holding that Kansas could compel a witness to testify to his past crimes upon a grant of immunity from state prosecution, though he still be subject to federal prosecution. In reaching this result, the Court took specific notice of the fact that, were the rule otherwise, state immunity statutes must all be stricken down. "The state statute could not, of course, prevent a prosecution of the same party under the United States statute." 199 U. S. 199 U.S. 372, 199 U. S. 380.
See Twining v. New Jersey, 211 U. S. 78, and Ensign v. Pennsylvania, supra, Note 1 holding respectively that, despite the Fourteenth Amendment, a state may compel a defendant to incriminate himself, and may use against him schedules he filed in an involuntary federal bankruptcy proceeding. But see Ashcraft v. Tennessee, 322 U. S. 143.
See Pittman, The Colonial and Constitutional History of the Privilege Against Self-Incrimination in America, 21 Va.L.Rev. 763, 775-783.
See United States v. Burr, 25 Fed.Cas. 38-41; Counselman v. Hitchcock, 142 U. S. 547, 142 U. S. 564-566; Brown v. Walker, 161 U. S. 591, 161 U. S. 594, 161 U. S. 600, 161 U. S. 605-606; cf. 85 U. S. 18 Wall. 163, 85 U. S. 173. And see Pittman, op. cit. supra, Note 11 and cases cited Notes 5 6, and 7, supra.
Compare Knox, Self-Incrimination, 74 Univ.Pa.L.Rev. 139, with VIII Wigmore on Evidence, Third Ed., pp. 304-313, and see Editorial, 16 Journ.Crim.Law and Crim. 165-166.
See dissenting opinion of Circuit Judge Frank in United States v. St. Pierre, 132 F.2d 837, 840 at 847, 848.
"Strangely enough, those who are most opposed to any changes in judicial constructions of those designedly elastic clauses of the Constitution are often the most vigorous in their demands that the courts should eviscerate the specific and relatively inelastic self-incrimination clause."
Id. 132 F.2d at 848.
See Chambers v. Florida, 309 U. S. 227, 309 U. S. 235-238; Tot v. United States, 319 U. S. 463, 319 U. S. 473.

References: § 215
 art. 45
 § 789
 § 17
 § 789
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