Opinion ID: 3030042
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Antelope’s Entitlement to Kastigar Immunity

Text: The nature of Antelope’s entitlement to immunity for incriminating statements is subject to some dispute between the parties. We find it appropriate to resolve their disagreement because the issue is intimately bound up with the resolution of the merits of Antelope’s Fifth Amendment claim. The government argues that Antelope has no entitlement to an assurance of immunity before he makes incriminating statements. See Kastigar, 406 U.S. at 453 (holding use and derivative use immunity under 18 U.S.C. §§ 6002-6003 co- extensive with the Fifth Amendment privilege). It contends, in effect, that the government has the right to compel Antelope to incriminate himself, prosecute him, and force him to litigate the admissibility of each piece of evidence in future criminal proceedings. Only then, according to its view, can Antelope properly assert his Fifth Amendment privilege. We disagree. As the Supreme Court has explained, adoption of the government’s position would all but eviscerate the protections the self-incrimination clause was designed to provide. See, e.g., Turley, 414 U.S. at 78 (“[A] witness protected by the privilege may rightfully refuse to answer unless and until he is protected at least against the use of his compelled answers and evidence derived therefrom in any subsequent criminal case in which he is a defendant.” (emphasis added)). More recently, Justice Thomas, speaking for four members of the Court, reaffirmed this principle: “By allowing a witness to insist on an immunity agreement before being compelled to give incriminating testimony in a noncriminal case, the privilege preserves the core Fifth Amendment right from invasion . . . .” Chavez v. Martinez, 538 U.S. 760, 771 (2003) (Thomas, J., in a plurality opinion joined by Rehnquist, C.J., O’Connor, J., and Scalia, J.) (emphasis in original). 1172 UNITED STATES v. ANTELOPE That this protection should be the law is only logical; “the failure to assert the privilege will often forfeit the right to exclude the evidence in a subsequent ‘criminal case.’ ” Id. (citing Murphy, 465 U.S. at 440). Without a pre-testimonial assurance of immunity, the witness would scarcely be better protected than if there were no privilege at all. See id. (“If the privilege could not be asserted [before making the incriminating disclosure], testimony given in those judicial proceedings would be deemed ‘voluntary’ . . . .” ). Our conclusion in this case gives effect to Justice Thomas’s admonition that “it is necessary to allow assertion of the privilege prior to the commencement of a ‘criminal case’ to safeguard the core Fifth Amendment trial right.” Id. In the face of the vast weight of precedent to the contrary, see, e.g., Murphy, 465 U.S. at 429-40 (discussing circumstances where the Fifth Amendment privilege is triggered the moment a defendant is compelled to give statements which might incriminate him in criminal proceedings, even if such proceedings have yet to be initiated), the government contends that Chavez stands for the proposition that Antelope may not assert the Fifth Amendment right until the moment a compelled statement is used in a criminal proceeding against him. But Chavez did not, as the government suggests, unseat decades of Supreme Court law. Instead, the government’s argument reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of Chavez. Chavez was a civil rights suit filed under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 by a plaintiff alleging that a police officer who aggressively questioned him violated his Fifth Amendment right. Six justices agreed with the defendant police officer that the cause of action premised on a Fifth Amendment violation could not survive summary judgment. See Chavez, 538 U.S. at 766-67 (Thomas, J., joined by Rehnquist, C.J., O’Connor, J., and Scalia, J.); id. at 777-79 (Souter, J., concurring, joined by Breyer, J.). But Chavez left unaltered the Court’s commitment to safeguarding the Fifth Amendment’s core guarantee under UNITED STATES v. ANTELOPE 1173 the circumstances presented here—a point the government chooses to ignore. Critical to the reasoning of all six justices was the simple principle that the scope of the Fifth Amendment’s efficacy is narrower when used as a sword in a civil suit than when used as a shield against criminal prosecution. See id. at 772-73 (Thomas, J., joined by Rehnquist, C.J., O’Connor, J., and Scalia, J.) (“Rules designed to safeguard a constitutional right [such as that protected by the selfincrimination clause] do not extend the scope of the constitutional right itself . . . . Accordingly, Chavez’s failure to read Miranda warnings to Martinez . . . cannot be grounds for a § 1983 action. And the absence of a ‘criminal case’ in which Martinez was compelled to be a ‘witness’ against himself defeats his core Fifth Amendment claim.” (internal citations omitted)); id. at 777-78 (Souter, J., concurring, joined by Breyer, J.) (explaining that while case law “requiring a grant of immunity in advance of any testimonial proffer . . . . is outside the Fifth Amendment’s core,” the privilege’s protections will only be expanded where “the core guarantee, or the judicial capacity to protect it, would be placed at some risk in the absence of such complementary protection,” and concluding that it was not “necessary to expand protection of the privilege . . . to . . . civil liability”). Simply stated, the holding of Chavez is tightly bound to its § 1983 context. [8] Were Antelope to turn the tables and sue the government, Chavez would direct our inquiry to the “core constitutional right”—and, in such a posture, the government’s argument might well prevail. But here, where Antelope is on the defensive, Fifth Amendment case law offers him protection beyond what the Chavez plurality called the “core” right. Thus, whether we describe our decision as arising out of a “prophylactic” or “constitutional” rule, the same result obtains: Antelope followed the appropriate course of action by refusing to answer the sexual history question until he was assured that his answers would be protected by immunity.5 5 The scope of the immunity should be consistent with the Supreme Court’s opinion in Kastigar, 406 U.S. at 453 (holding that “immunity 1174 UNITED STATES v. ANTELOPE III. THE PROHIBITION ON “ANY PORNOGRAPHIC MATERIALS” [9] Antelope also challenges as unconstitutionally vague the provision of his supervised release prohibiting him from possessing “any pornographic, sexually oriented or sexually stimulating materials.” In United States v. Guagliardo, 278 F.3d 868 (9th Cir. 2002), we held impermissibly vague a similar supervised release term. Guagliardo was prohibited from possessing “ ‘any pornography,’ including legal adult pornography.” Id. at 872. Because “a probationer cannot reasonably understand what is encompassed by a blanket prohibition on ‘pornography,’ ” we remanded for clarification. Id. We do the same here. The condition imposed on Antelope is indistinguishable from the one imposed on Guagliardo. Here, instead of “any pornography,” we have “any pornographic . . . materials.” The government contends that “sexually oriented or sexually stimulating” should be read to define “pornographic.” We decline to adopt this grammatically unnatural reading. The release term explicitly lists three types of materials that Antelope may not possess: “any pornographic, sexually oriented or sexually stimulating materials.” Because the condition imposed on Antelope suffers from the same defect as the one struck down in Guagliardo, we vacate and remand for clarification. Upon reconsideration, the district court may take note of the condition imposed in United States v. Rearden, 349 F.3d 608 (9th Cir. 2003), which passed constitutional muster.