Opinion ID: 744057
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Application of the Privilege and United States Enforcement of Domestic Law

Text: 16 The district court viewed the potential effect of the privilege on domestic law enforcement as the primary obstacle to granting the privilege to those in Balsys's position. See Balsys, 918 F.Supp. at 599 ([T]o allow Balsys to invoke the privilege would unreasonably impinge on the government's ability to monitor and verify immigration and visa applications.). Other courts and commentators that have denied such witnesses the privilege have been similarly concerned that granting the privilege would allow the priorities of foreign prosecutions to inhibit domestic law enforcement. See, e.g., Araneta, 794 F.2d at 926 (It would be intolerable to require the United States to forego evidence legitimately within its reach solely because a foreign power could deploy this evidence in a fashion not permitted within this country.); Lileikis, 899 F.Supp. at 809 (stating that if the United States has a legitimate need for a witness's testimony, [i]t would be an unacceptable affront to the sovereignty of the United States if the operation of its laws could be stymied by the desire of a foreign government to prosecute the same witness); Parker, 411 F.2d at 1070; Diego A. Rotztain, Note, The Fifth Amendment Privilege Against Self-Incrimination and Fear of Foreign Prosecution, 96 Colum. L.Rev.1940, 1964 (1996). 17 This objection is significant because it contrasts the effects on domestic law enforcement of granting the privilege to those who fear criminal charges abroad with the effects of granting it to witnesses who fear prosecution at home. When a witness refuses to answer questions because he is afraid of domestic prosecution, the government is able to compel the testimony by offering the witness immunity from the use either of the testimony or of its fruits in a subsequent domestic criminal prosecution. See Kastigar, 406 U.S. at 449, 459, 92 S.Ct. at 1658, 1664. This immunity is enforced by the courts. Once a defendant establishes that he has testified under a grant of immunity, the court will exclude evidence in subsequent criminal proceedings unless the government proves that the evidence it proposes to use comes from a legitimate source independent of the compelled testimony. See id. at 460, 92 S.Ct. at 1664. Where a witness fears foreign criminal proceedings, under current law, the United States cannot grant effective immunity since our courts cannot ensure the exclusion of evidence from prosecutions abroad. Because allowing the privilege in the latter case allegedly deprives the government of the means of compelling testimony, the result is said to be an unacceptable encroachment on the government's law enforcement efforts. 18 We find the strength of this objection to be exaggerated, and we conclude that it does not justify denying those who fear foreign prosecution the right to use the privilege. 19 The fact that allowing the privilege has costs for domestic law enforcement is not by itself a constitutional argument for disallowing the privilege. See Cardassi, 351 F.Supp. at 1086 (Of course, a constitutional privilege does not disappear, nor even lose its normal vitality, simply because its use may hinder law enforcement activities. That is a consequence of nearly all the protections of the Bill of Rights, and a consequence that was originally and ever since deemed justified by the need to protect individual rights.). 20 The effective enforcement of a well-designed penal code is of course indispensable for social security. But the Bill of Rights was added to the original Constitution in the conviction that too high a price may be paid even for the unhampered enforcement of the criminal law and that, in its attainment, other social objects of a free society should not be sacrificed. 21 Feldman v. United States, 322 U.S. 487, 489, 64 S.Ct. 1082, 1083, 88 L.Ed. 1408 (1944). It is the duty of the courts to enforce constitutional protections despite their costs. 22 It might nevertheless be argued that in deciding whether a constitutional right exists, a court may consider the effect that such a finding will have on legitimate government needs. For example, it could be said that, if the application of the privilege against self-incrimination that we consider today has a much greater negative effect on domestic law enforcement than does the traditional application of the privilege, this disparity might itself be relevant to what the words of the Framers should be taken to mean. The premise of this argument, however--that the interpretation of the privilege that we accept today would have a significantly greater adverse effect on the United States's ability to pursue domestic law enforcement goals than does its traditional application--is dubious.1. The Conflict Rarely Arises 8 23 In the first place, the circumstances giving rise to application of the privilege in cases involving foreign prosecutions rarely occur. Since the Supreme Court refused to consider the constitutional question twenty-five years ago in Zicarelli--finding that the witness had not established a real and substantial fear of foreign prosecution--only a handful of witnesses have managed to demonstrate such a fear. See Gecas, 50 F.3d at 1556-62; Araneta, 794 F.2d at 923-25; United States v. Ragauskas, No. 94 C. 2325, 1995 WL 86640, at  3-4 (N.D.Ill.1995); Moses, 779 F.Supp. at 861-870; Trucis, 89 F.R.D. at 673; Mishima, 507 F.Supp. at 132-33; Cardassi, 351 F.Supp. at 1083-84. In most cases, courts have found that the danger is remote and speculative and, hence, insufficient to justify the application of the privilege. See, e.g., Environmental Tectonics v. W.S. Kirkpatrick, Inc., 847 F.2d 1052, 1064-65 (3d Cir.1988), aff'd on other grounds, 493 U.S. 400, 110 S.Ct. 701, 107 L.Ed.2d 816 (1990); United States v. Joudis, 800 F.2d 159, 163-64 (7th Cir.1986); In re President's Comm'n on Organized Crime, 763 F.2d 1191, 1198-99 (11th Cir.1985); Chevrier, 748 F.2d at 104-05 (2d Cir.1984); Gilboe, 699 F.2d at 75-78; Flanagan, 691 F.2d at 121-24; Nigro, 705 F.2d at 1226-28; In re Baird, 668 F.2d 432, 434 (8th Cir.1982); United States v. Yanagita, 552 F.2d 940, 946-47 (2d Cir.1977); In re Tierney, 465 F.2d 806, 811-12 (5th Cir.1972). 24 This is likely to continue to be the case, as it is difficult to establish a real and substantial fear of criminal prosecution abroad. For example, one important factor in determining whether a witness has a real and substantial fear of foreign prosecution is whether, by extradition or deportation, he would likely be forced to enter a country disposed to prosecute him. Gecas, 50 F.3d at 1560; see also Balsys, 918 F.Supp. at 596; Flanagan, 691 F.2d at 121. And few witnesses are, in fact, subject to either deportation or extradition. 25 Only aliens may be deported. See 8 U.S.C. § 1227. 9 And extradition generally requires the existence of an authorizing treaty. See United States v. Alvarez-Machain, 504 U.S. 655, 664, 112 S.Ct. 2188, 2193, 119 L.Ed.2d 441 (1992); Valentine v. United States ex rel. Neidecker, 299 U.S. 5, 8-9, 57 S.Ct. 100, 102-03, 81 L.Ed. 5 (1936). Moreover, even if an extradition treaty exists linking the United States and the country in which a witness fears prosecution, the witness can be extradited to that country only for acts that would also be criminal in the United States. 10 For these reasons, and because of other barriers to showing a real and substantial fear of foreign prosecution, the class of witnesses who are likely to be eligible for the privilege under the interpretation Balsys advocates is very limited. 26 In the second place, even where a real and substantial fear of prosecution is established, allowing the witness to invoke the privilege would often have little effect on domestic law enforcement. A witness may only use the privilege in response to questions the answers to which might in themselves support a conviction or furnish a link in the chain of evidence needed to prosecute the claimant for a ... crime. Hoffman v. United States, 341 U.S. 479, 486, 71 S.Ct. 814, 817, 95 L.Ed. 1118 (1951). He may not maintain a general silence. Since the United States's interests in domestic law enforcement concern primarily domestic activities and foreign prosecutions concern primarily foreign activities, when what a witness fears is foreign prosecution, the information sought by the United States will usually not fall within the scope of the silence that the Fifth Amendment allows to that witness. See Cardassi, 351 F.Supp. at 1086. 27 In the third place, since an adverse inference may be drawn in civil cases when a witness invokes the privilege, that very invocation often aids the government's case at the same time that it deprives the government of the testimony it sought. In Baxter v. Palmigiano, 425 U.S. 308, 96 S.Ct. 1551, 47 L.Ed.2d 810 (1976), the Supreme Court made clear that while the Fifth Amendment precludes the drawing of adverse inferences against defendants in criminal cases, it does not forbid adverse inferences against parties to civil actions when they refuse to testify in response to probative evidence offered against them. Id. at 318, 96 S.Ct. at 1557. This is so even though, as in Baxter, the government is a party to the action and would benefit from the drawing of the inference. LiButti v. United States, 107 F.3d 110, 121 (2d Cir.1997) (citing United States v. Ianniello, 824 F.2d 203, 208 (2d Cir.1987)). 28 It follows, for example, that since a deportation hearing is a civil proceeding, see Lopez-Mendoza, 468 U.S. at 1038-39, 104 S.Ct. at 3482-83 a resident alien, like Balsys, who refuses to answer questions that might incriminate him abroad takes a chance that he will create a negative inference that may be used in conjunction with other evidence to deport him. Invoking the privilege in the face of incriminating questions is probably not, by itself, sufficient to justify depriving a person of an important liberty interest. See Superintendent v. Hill, 472 U.S. 445, 455, 105 S.Ct. 2768, 2773, 86 L.Ed.2d 356 (1985). And freedom from deportation is such an interest. See United States ex rel. Vajtauer v. Commissioner of Immigration, 273 U.S. 103, 106, 47 S.Ct. 302, 303, 71 L.Ed. 560 (1927). But if there is other evidence, the witness's silence may contribute to a decision to deport the alien. See United States v. Stelmokas, 100 F.3d 302, 311 (3d Cir.1996) (stating that adverse inferences could be drawn in a denaturalization proceeding against an alleged Nazi collaborator from fact that he invoked his privilege against self-incrimination as long as there was independent evidence to support the negative inferences beyond the invocation of the privilege against self-incrimination), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 117 S.Ct. 1847, 137 L.Ed.2d 1050, (1997). The possibility of drawing adverse inferences, thus substantially reduces the effects on government law enforcement efforts of applying the privilege to those who fear incriminating themselves in foreign prosecutions. 29 Finally, the witness's testimony may not be the only source of the information the government seeks. And although the government might prefer to obtain the information directly from the witness, it may often be able to achieve its law enforcement goals by relying entirely on other sources of evidence. 30 2. Parallels to Immunity Statutes May Be Enacted 31 Nevertheless, we assume that there do exist a number of cases in which the testimony sought by the government will be (a) within the scope of the privilege possessed by a witness (b) who genuinely fears prosecution abroad, (c) in circumstances in which the witness's failure to testify would affect the government's interests adversely. There are domestic legal areas in which the United States has an important interest in a witness's testimony about events that occurred overseas. The present case provides the most common example. When a resident alien is alleged to have lied about criminal activities in which he engaged in a foreign country, the United States may have a strong interest in excluding him from the United States, and the other country may have a strong interest in prosecuting him. 11 See, e.g., Balsys, 918 F.Supp. at 592-97; Gecas, 50 F.3d at 1553-62. And even with a negative inference against him, the government may not have sufficient evidence to deport the witness without his own testimony. 32 We do not doubt, therefore, that applying the privilege to those who fear foreign prosecution will have some constraining effect--albeit less than the government suggests--on the government's pursuit of testimony. Even in such cases, however, the government can do much to minimize the costs to its law enforcement efforts, enough, indeed, so that those costs become analogous to those that occur in domestic prosecutions. For methods may exist by which the United States can constitutionally bypass the privilege either by eliminating the likelihood that the witness will be sent to the jurisdiction that would prosecute him, or by granting some form of constructive immunity to the witness. 33 As we have indicated previously, in cases involving fear of domestic prosecution, immunity statutes have become, over time, not only a rational accommodation between the imperatives of the privilege and the legitimate demands of government to compel citizens to testify, but also  'part of our constitutional fabric.'  Kastigar, 406 U.S. at 446-47, 92 S.Ct. at 1656-57 (quoting Ullmann v. United States, 350 U.S. 422, 438, 76 S.Ct. 497, 506, 100 L.Ed. 511 (1956)). And while the government must provide protection as comprehensive as the protection afforded by the privilege, Kastigar, 406 U.S. at 449, 92 S.Ct. at 1658 the Supreme Court has not stated that the combination of use and derivative-use immunity and the exclusionary rule is necessarily the only method for achieving this. 12 The way may be open, therefore, for the adoption of analogies to immunity statutes that would grant equivalent protection to witnesses whose fear is of foreign prosecutions. 34 While we need not pass on the constitutional sufficiency of any particular measures today, we note that extradition and deportation are not fixed practices. Congress may regulate extradition. 13 See 18 U.S.C. §§ 3181-3196. And the executive branch has substantial discretion over extradition both by statute and through its role in negotiating treaties. See U.S. Const. art. II, § 2 (stating that the President shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur); 18 U.S.C. § 3186 (stating that it is within the Secretary of State's discretion to determine whether an accused person is actually extradited); United States v. Kin-Hong, 110 F.3d 103, 109 (1st Cir.), stay denied, --- U.S. ----, 117 S.Ct. 1491, 137 L.Ed.2d 816 (1997) (noting that procedures for extradition are governed by statute and that the Secretary may decline to extradite a witness on any number of discretionary grounds, including but not limited to, humanitarian and foreign policy considerations). Like extradition, deportation is also regulated by statutes, many of which give considerable discretion to the executive. See 8 U.S.C., Ch. 12. 35 It follows that Congress can pass laws regulating extradition and deportation in cases involving the privilege, just as it has enacted immunity statutes in the past to deal with fear of domestic prosecution. 14 For example, Congress could provide that no one who has been compelled to testify despite a well-founded fear of prosecution in a given country will be deported or extradited to that country (or to countries empowered to so extradite him). See Flanagan, 691 F.2d at 124 (suggesting that a law prohibiting the extradition of a witness who gives testimony pursuant to a grant of immunity would negate the real and substantial risk of prosecution). 15 Both Congress and the executive branch may thus be able to limit dramatically the domestic law enforcement costs of the interpretation of Fifth Amendment that we accept today by developing schemes that parallel domestic immunity statutes. 16 36 We conclude that the negative effect on domestic enforcement efforts of allowing the privilege is of the same order when the witness fears foreign prosecution as when he fears domestic prosecution, and is, in any event, not substantial enough to undermine the fact that granting the privilege to those who fear foreign prosecution is consistent with the language of the Fifth Amendment, with its aims, and with the reasoning of the most relevant Supreme Court cases. Like the panel in Gecas, we therefore believe that this application of the privilege reasonably serves the purposes of the privilege and preserves the goals of domestic law enforcement. Gecas, 50 F.3d at 1565.