Source: http://www.chanrobles.com/usa/us_supremecourt/390/39/case.php
Timestamp: 2019-08-21 00:22:19
Document Index: 324159650

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 4411', '§ 4412', '§ 6806', '§ 4403', '§ 5295', '§ 6107']

MARCHETTI V. UNITED STATES, 390 U. S. 39 (1968) - US SUPREME COURT DECISIONS ON-LINE
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(c) United States v. Kahriger, supra, Lewis v. United States, supra, both pro tanto overruled. Pp. 390 U. S. 50-54. chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
Petitioner was convicted in the United States District Court for the District of Connecticut under two indictments which charged violations of the federal wagering tax statutes. The first indictment averred that petitioner and others conspired to evade payment of the annual occupational tax imposed by 26 U.S.C. § 4411. The second indictment included two counts: the first chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
We granted certiorari to reexamine the constitutionality under the Fifth Amendment of the pertinent provisions of the wagering tax statutes, and more particularly to consider whether Kahriger and Lewis still have vitality. [Footnote 1] 383 U.S. 942. For reasons which follow, we have chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
The taxes are supplemented by ancillary provisions calculated to assure their collection. In particular, § 4412 requires those liable for the occupational tax to register each year with the director of their local internal revenue district. The registrants must submit Internal Revenue Service Form 11-C, [Footnote 2] and upon it must provide their residence and business addresses, must indicate whether they are engaged in the business of accepting wagers, and must list the names and addresses of their agents and employees. The statutory obligations to register chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
In addition, registrants are obliged to post the revenue stamps which denote payment of the occupational tax "conspicuously" in their principal places of business, or, if they lack such places, to keep the stamps on their persons, and to exhibit them upon demand to any Treasury officer. 26 U.S.C. § 6806(c). They are required to preserve daily records indicating the gross amount of the wagers as to which they are liable for taxation, and to permit inspection of their books of account. 26 U.S.C. §§ 4403, 4423. Moreover, each principal internal revenue office is instructed to maintain for public inspection a listing of all who have paid the occupational tax, and to provide certified copies of the listing upon request to any state or local prosecuting officer. 26 U.S.C. chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
State and local enactments are more comprehensive. The laws of every State, except Nevada, include broad prohibitions against gambling, wagering, and associated activities. [Footnote 5] Every State forbids, with essentially minor chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
and carefully circumscribed exceptions, lotteries. [Footnote 6] Even Nevada, which permits many forms of gambling, retains criminal penalties upon lotteries and certain other wagering chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
Connecticut, in which petitioner allegedly conducted his activities, has adopted a variety of measures for the punishment of gambling and wagering. It punishes "[a]ny person, whether as principal, agent or servant, who owns, possesses, keeps, manages, maintains or occupies" premises employed for purposes of wagering or pool selling. Conn.Gen.Stat.Rev. § 5295 (1958). It imposes criminal penalties upon any person who possesses, keeps, or maintains premises in which policy playing occurs, or lotteries are conducted, and upon any chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
Information obtained as a consequence of the federal wagering tax laws is readily available to assist the efforts of state and federal authorities to enforce these penalties. Section 6107 of Title 26 requires the principal internal revenue offices to provide to prosecuting officers a listing of those who have paid the occupational tax. Section 6806(c) obliges taxpayers either to post the revenue stamp "conspicuously" in their principal places of business, or to keep it on their persons, and to produce it on the demand of Treasury officers. Evidence of the possession of a federal wagering tax stamp, or of payment of the wagering taxes, has often been admitted at trial in state and federal prosecutions for gambling offenses; [Footnote 7] such evidence has doubtless proved useful even more frequently to lead prosecuting authorities to other evidence upon which convictions have subsequently chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
In these circumstances, it can scarcely be denied that the obligations to register and to pay the occupational tax created for petitioner "real and appreciable," and not merely "imaginary and unsubstantial," hazards of self-incrimination. Reg. v. Boyes, 1 B. & S. 311, 330; Brown v. Walker, 161 U. S. 591, 161 U. S. 599-600; Rogers v. United States, 340 U. S. 367, 340 U. S. 374. Petitioner was confronted by a comprehensive system of federal and state prohibitions against wagering activities; he was required, on pain of criminal prosecution, to provide information which he might reasonably suppose would be available to prosecuting authorities, and which would surely prove a significant "link in a chain" [Footnote 9] of evidence tending to establish his guilt. [Footnote 10] Unlike the income tax return chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
Nonetheless, this Court has twice concluded that the privilege against self-incrimination may not appropriately be asserted by those in petitioner's circumstances. United States v. Kahriger, supra; Lewis v. Unite State, supra. We must therefore consider whether those cases have continuing force in light of our more recent decisions. Moreover, we must also consider the relevance of certain collateral lines of authority; in particular, we must determine whether either the "required records" doctrine, Shapiro v. United States, 335 U. S. 1, or restrictions placed upon the use by prosecuting authorities of information obtained as a consequence of the wagering taxes, cf. Murphy v. Waterfront Commission, 378 U. S. 52, should be utilized to preclude assertion of the constitutional privilege in this situation. To these questions we turn. chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
The Court in Sullivan was evidently concerned, first, that the claim before it was an unwarranted extension of the scope of the privilege, and, second, that to accept a claim of privilege not asserted at the time the return was due would "make the taxpayer, rather than a tribunal the final arbiter of the merits of the claim." Albertson v. SACB, 382 U. S. 70, 382 U. S. 79. Neither reason suffices to prevent this petitioner's assertion of the privilege. The first is, as we have indicated, inapplicable, and we find the second unpersuasive in this situation. Every element of these requirements would have served to incriminate petitioner; to have required him to present his claim to Treasury officers would have obliged him "to prove guilt to avoid admitting it." United States v. Kahriger, supra, at 345 U. S. 34 (concurring opinion). I n these circumstances, we cannot conclude that his failure chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
We find this reasoning no longer persuasive. The question is not whether petitioner holds a "right" to violate state law, but whether, having done so, he may be compelled to give evidence against himself. The constitutional privilege was intended to shield the guilty and imprudent as well as the innocent and foresighted; if such an inference of antecedent choice were alone enough to abrogate the privilege's protection, it would be excluded from the situations in which it has historically been guaranteed, and withheld from those who most require it. Such inferences, bottomed on what must ordinarily be a fiction, have precisely the infirmities which the Court has found in other circumstances in which implied or uninformed waivers of the privilege have been said to have occurred. See, e.g., Carnley v. Cochran, 369 U. S. 506. Compare Johnson v. Zerbst, 304 U. S. 458, and Glasser v. United States, 315 U. S. 60. To give credence to such "waivers" without the most deliberate examination of the circumstances surrounding them chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
Substantial hazards of incrimination as to past or present acts plainly may stem from the requirements to register and to pay the occupational tax. See generally McKee, The Fifth Amendment and the Federal Gambling Tax, 5 Duke B.J. 86. In the first place, satisfaction of those requirements increases the likelihood that any past or present gambling offenses will be discovered and successfully prosecuted. It both centers attention upon the registrant as a gambler and compels "injurious disclosure[s]" [Footnote 11] which may provide or assist in the collection of evidence admissible in a prosecution for past or present offenses. These offenses need not include actual gambling; they might involve only the custody or transportation of gambling paraphernalia, or other preparations for future gambling. Further, the acquisition of a federal gambling tax stamp, chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
The central standard for the privilege's application has been whether the claimant is confronted by substantial and "real," and not merely trifling or imaginary, hazards of incrimination. Rogers v. United States, 340 U. S. 367, 340 U. S. 374; Brown v. Walker, 161 U. S. 591, 161 U. S. 600. This principle does not permit the rigid chronological distinction adopted in Kahriger and Lewis. We see chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
We conclude that nothing in the Court's opinions in Kahriger and Lewis now suffices to preclude petitioner's assertion of the constitutional privilege as a defense to the indictments under which he was convicted. To this extent, Kahriger and Lewis are overruled. chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
Each of the three principal elements of the doctrine, as it is described in Shapiro, is absent from this situation. chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
First, petitioner Marchetti was not, by the provisions now at issue, obliged to keep and preserve records "of the same kind as he has customarily kept"; he was required simply to provide information, unrelated to any records which he may have maintained, about his wagering activities. This requirement is not significantly different from a demand that he provide oral testimony. Compare McKay, supra, at 221. Second, whatever "public aspects" there were to the records at issue in Shapiro, there are none to the information demanded from Marchetti. The Government's anxiety to obtain information known to a private individual does not, without more, render that information public; if it did, no room would remain for the application of the constitutional privilege. Nor does it stamp information with a public character that the Government has formalized its demands in the attire of a statute; if this alone were sufficient, the constitutional privilege could be entirely abrogated by any Act of Congress. Third, the requirements at issue in Shapiro were imposed in "an essentially noncriminal and regulatory area of inquiry," while those here are directed to a "selective group inherently suspect of criminal activities." Cf. Albertson v. SACB, 382 U. S. 70, 382 U. S. 79. The United States' principal interest is evidently the collection of revenue, and not the punishment of gamblers, see United States v. Calamaro, 354 U. S. 351, 354 U. S. 358; but the characteristics of the activities about which information is sought, and the composition of the groups to which inquiries are made, readily distinguish this situation from that in Shapiro. There is no need to explore further the elements and limitations of Shapiro and the cases involving public papers; these points of difference in combination preclude any appropriate application of those cases to the present one. chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
The terms of the wagering tax system make quite plain that Congress intended information obtained as a consequence of registration and payment of the occupational chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
tax to be provided to interested prosecuting authorities. See 26 U.S.C. § 6107. [Footnote 15] This has evidently been the consistent practice of the Revenue Service. We must therefore assume that the imposition of use restrictions would directly preclude effectuation of a significant element of Congress' purposes in adopting the wagering taxes. [Footnote 16] Moreover, the imposition of such restrictions would necessarily oblige state prosecuting authorities to establish in each case that their evidence was untainted by any connection with information obtained as a consequence of the wagering taxes; [Footnote 17] the federal requirements would thus be protected only at the cost of hampering, perhaps seriously, enforcement of state prohibitions against gambling. We cannot know how Congress would assess the competing demands of the chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
Nonetheless, we can only conclude, under the wagering tax system as presently written, that petitioner properly asserted the privilege against self-incrimination, and that his assertion should have provided a complete defense to this prosecution. This defense should have reached both chanroblesvirtualawlibrary