Opinion ID: 2639328
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: analyical approaches

Text: While no court has addressed the specific issue before us, agreements between law enforcement officials and the accused have generated a substantial body of precedent. Courts have resorted to a patchwork of statutory, contract, equitable and fifth amendment due process analytical approaches to address related issues. Here, both parties have offered arguments grounded in traditional contract law. While useful by analogy, contract law assumes a fairly bargained for agreement and the remedies are intended to provide the parties with the benefit of their agreement or return them as nearly as practical to their preagreement position; neither the assumption nor remedies squarely fit the reality of criminal prosecutions. State v. Reed, 75 Wash.App. 742, 879 P.2d 1000 (1994). Both parties also argue cases involving plea bargains, but the only remedies available for breach of a plea agreement are specific performance or withdrawal of the plea. Santobello v. New York, 404 U.S. 257, 92 S.Ct. 495, 30 L.Ed.2d 427 (1971). A violation of an agreement to induce an accused to waive the fifth amendment right against self-incrimination, if one is found, may require the crafting of a remedy consistent with the scope of the privilege against self-incrimination. Kastigar v. United States, 406 U.S. 441, 92 S.Ct. 1653, 32 L.Ed.2d 212 (1972). Thus, while useful, plea bargains differ from grants of informal immunity. We have been urged to look at the federal system for guidance where the agreement of one federal prosecutor may bind other federal districts. [3] Our state system differs from the federal system where all prosecutors must answer to the single United States attorney general. We are also referred to cases holding that one state's attorney general may not bind another state's attorney general. Louisiana v. Edmondson, 97-2456 (La.7/8/98), 714 So.2d 1233. But here we are not dealing with a question of federalism, rather a question of intra-jurisdictional authority. Yet, while not dispositive, these many explorations into the issues and principles of our criminal justice system provide us with a framework for analysis. The type and scope of the immunity agreement is important to any analysis. Immunity agreements may be either formal or informal. Formal immunity is imposed upon an unwilling witness. The government may compel testimony from an unwilling witness who invokes the fifth amendment privilege against compulsory self-incrimination, by conferring upon the witness immunity. When first confronted with this issue, the United States Supreme Court held unconstitutional an 1868 statute which required testimony over a refusal to testify on fifth amendment grounds because the protection the statute provided a witness was not coextensive with that afforded by the fifth amendment. Counselman v. Hitchcock, 142 U.S. 547, 12 S.Ct. 195, 35 L.Ed. 1110 (1892). While the ability of the government to compel testimony in exchange for a grant of immunity is now well established, this formal immunity process is cloaked with a high degree of constitutional protection. Informal immunity is a grant of immunity to a willing witness. Usually an accused or a suspect trades information and testimony to enable the State to make a case against other defendants. These agreements are criticized for many reasons from being too lenient on the criminal informer, to being an inducement for criminals to testify to anything to save their own necks. An immunity agreement does not require a plea, but is a deal in which the subject may escape scot free. Accordingly, these informal consensual immunity arrangements have been provided less constitutional protection. The scope of an immunity agreement may be tailored, but generally falls into two categories: transactional immunity and use/derivative use immunity. Transactional immunity precludes prosecution arising from any transaction about which a witness testifies, while use/derivative use immunity acts only to suppress a witness' testimony and evidence derived directly or indirectly from that testimony. Use/derivative use immunity is favored over transactional immunity by prosecutors because it permits prosecution if the State can show the source of its evidence is wholly independent from and untainted by the fruit of the witness' testimony. It also places the informer exactly where he or she would have been had there been no agreement. The King County prosecutor and Bryant entered into a negotiated, informal use/derivative use immunity agreement. It is the application of that agreement we review.