Source: https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/367/556
Timestamp: 2019-04-23 14:21:54+00:00

Document:
Petitioner plainly must have knownand gave every indication that he knewthat he was required to answer all questions put to him by the grand jury in return for equivalent, compensating immunity. We find no merit in an argument which is contradicted by petitioner's own assertion, supported by his counsel's argument, that he refused to testify solely because of fear.
This case represents another long step in the constantly expanding use by the federal district judges of their summary contempt power to mete out severe prison sentences without according the defendants the benefit of a jury trial and the other rights guaranteed by the Fifth and Sixth Amendments. 1 In an ordinary case of this nature, I would content myself with saying that the conviction should be reversed on the ground that a federal district judge has no power to impose such punishment in a summary proceeding. See Green v. United States, 356 U.S. 165, 193, 78 S.Ct. 632, 648, 2 L.Ed.2d 672 (dissenting opinion); Reina v. United States, 364 U.S. 507, 515, 81 S.Ct. 260, 265, 5 L.Ed.2d 249 (dissenting opinion). However, the facts of this case are so disquieting that I am compelled to add a few adi tional comments.
In 1958, the petitioner was convicted of selling and possessing narcotics in violation of the federal narcotics laws and was sentenced by a Federal District Court to six years' imprisonment. In 1959, while serving his sentence at the Leavenworth Penitentiary, the petitioner was subpoenaed to testify before a federal grand jury conducting an investigation of possible narcotics offenses. He was asked to indicate where he had obtained the narcotics which he was convicted of having possessed and sold. Invoking his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination, the petitioner refused to answer the question. 2 He was then asked whether he knew several named individuals and whether he had obtained the narcotics from any of those individuals. Still relying upon his Fifth Amendment privilege, the petitioner refused to answer each of the questions. On petition of the Government, the District Court authorized the granting of immunity to the petitioner pursuant to 18 U.S.C. 1406, 18 U.S.C.A. § 1406, and instructed him to answer the questions asked by the grand jury. Upon being recalled before the grand jury, the petitioner again invoked the Fifth Amendment and refused to identify those from whom he had obtained the narcotics which constituted the basis for his 1958 conviction. 3 In response to a subsequent order to show cause why he should not be held in contempt of court, the petitioner asserted, as an additional reason for not answering, that the lives of his wife and children, as well as his own life, would be endangered were he to answer the questions. Having denied the petitioner's request for a jury trial, the district judge summarily found the petitioner guilty of contempt of court and sentenced him to eighteen months' imprisonment, to be served after the completion of the six-year sentence imposed in 1958.
In my opinion, the Government has subjected the petitioner to unjustifiable harassment. The petitioner has been convicted for his admittedly illegal conduct and is presently paying his debt to society for that conduct. However, not being satisfied with this punishment, the Government sought to extract from the petitioner, under the threat of a contempt conviction, testimony which it could not have compelled at the original trial in 1958, and which it knows might well endanger petitioner's life and the lives of his loved ones. In my view, the Government's attempt to compel the petitioner to testify about conduct for which he has already been punished, and the District Court's imposition of an additional term in the penitentiary for petitioner's refusal to testify about such conduct represents the type of harassment which violates the spirit of the Double Jeopardy Clause of the Fifth Amendment. Cf. Abbate v. United States, 359 U.S. 187, 196, 79 S.Ct. 666, 671, 3 L.Ed.2d 729 (separate opinion of Mr. Justice Brennan); Ciucci v. State of Illinois, 356 U.S. 571, 573, 78 S.Ct. 839, 840, 2 L.Ed.2d 983 (dissenting opinion). I think it can fairly be said that the treatment which the petitioner has received from the Government and the District Court falls far short of that fundamental fairness which the Constitution guarantees and to which even the basest prisoner in the penitentiary is entitled. 4 Therefore, even if the Court is unwilling to recognize that the Constitution prohibits the imposition of punishment in a summary proceeding, it ought to exercise its supervisory power over the lower federal courts to rectify the abuse of the summary contempt power which the record in this case makes manifest. See Offutt v. United States, 348 U.S. 11, 75 S.Ct. 11, 99 L.Ed. 11.
I think the imposition of an eighteen months' sentence was beyond the power of a federal court in a summary proceeding. That was the view stated by Mr. Justice Black in his dissenting opinion in Green v. United States, 356 U.S. 165, 193, 78 S.Ct. 632, 648, 2 L.Ed.2d 672, with which I agreed then and still agree. There is nothing I can find in the Constitution which permits those who defy a court's decree to be tried in one way and those who defy a mandate of the Congress 1 or an order of the Executive 2 to be tried in another way. Whatever the criminal charge may be, an accused is entitled to the protections afforded by the Constitutionindictment by a grand jury and trial before a petit jury which sits to determine guilt. Determination of guilt by a judge, without these safeguards interposed between the accused and government, marks a continuing erosion of civil rights. The evil is compounded here by reason of the fact that contempt is used to increase a punishment already imposed for an offense as respects which no second indictment could ever be returned. Criminal contempt is used to undermine not only the guarantees of an indictment by a grand jury and a trial by one's peers but also to destroy the protection of double jeopardy.
If two persons witness an offenseone being an innocent bystander and the other an accomplice who is thereafter imprisoned for his participationthe latter has no more right to keep silent than the former. The Government of course has an obligation to protect is citizens from harm. But fear of reprisal offers an immunized prisoner no more dispensation from testifying than it does any innocent bystander without a record.
Only in the last few years has it become the fashion for district judges to use the summary contempt power as a device for imposing long terms of imprisonment. See, e.g., Reina v. United States, 364 U.S. 507, 81 S.Ct. 260, 5 L.Ed.2d 249 (two years' imprisonment); Brown v. United States, 359 U.S. 41, 79 S.Ct. 539, 3 L.Ed.2d 609 (fifteen months' imprisonment); Green v. United States, 356 U.S. 165, 78 S.Ct. 632, 2 L.Ed.2d 672 (three years' imprisonment); Collins v. United States, 9 Cir., 269 F.2d 745 (three years' imprisonment); Tedesco v. United States, 6 Cir., 255 F.2d 35 (two years' imprisonment); Corona v. United States, 6 Cir., 250 F.2d 578 (two years' imprisonment). Prior to this recent trend, the summary contempt power was seldom used to impose more than a nominal fine or a short term of imprisonment. See Brown v. United States, supra, 359 U.S. at pages 5859, 79 S.Ct. at pages 550551 (dissenting opinion).
'Q. Mr. Piemonte, that sale and possession of heroin, there were two sales, were there not, one ounce and 95 grains of heroin that you sold for $3100.00, and another salethe first one was on November 23, 1957, and the second one was on November 27, 1957, when you sold eight ounces 354 grains for $3,000.00 to Agent Davis; those were the charges in the indictment? A. Right.

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