Opinion ID: 854149
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Indiana and federal precedents demonstrate a common objective of the two constitutional rights

Text: That we reach the same conclusions drawn by the Supreme Court of the United States on this issue in Burbine is consistent with the interwoven history of the federal and state rights. The Indiana right has been thought to be derived in part from earlier state constitutions. WILLIAM P. MCLAUGHLIN, THE INDIANA STATE CONSTITUTION 46 (1996). Similarly, the language of the Fifth Amendment enjoys some precedent in state constitutional provisions that were enacted before the Federal Bill of Rights. Eben Moglen, Taking the Fifth: Reconsidering the Origins of the Constitutional Privilege Against Self-Incrimination, 92 MICH.L.REV. 1086, 1118-23 (1994) (concluding that historical evidence is thin and inconclusive on precise impact of state provisions on framing of Fifth Amendment). Although not dispositive, the parallel development of the federal and Indiana doctrines is also relevant to this inquiry. The Fifth Amendment right to be free from self-incrimination was not held applicable to state criminal trials via the Fourteenth Amendment until 1964. Malloy, 378 U.S. at 6, 84 S.Ct. at 1492-93. Since that time, self-incrimination issues have more often been presented to our state courts under the Fifth Amendment. To the extent the state constitutional right has been implicated since Malloy, separate analysis of the right has been sparse. Indeed, we declared without elaboration in a 1970 case that the Indiana right has the same scope and effect as the privilege against self-incrimination in the Fifth Amendment. Haskett v. State, 255 Ind. 206, 209, 263 N.E.2d 529, 531 (1970) (footnote omitted). Other post- Malloy decisions appear to have assumed as much without saying so explicitly. See, e.g., Bivins v. State, 433 N.E.2d 387, 390 (Ind.1982); Brown v. State, 256 Ind. 558, 270 N.E.2d 751 (1971). However, for a century and a half before Malloy, the two doctrines existed in parallel but did not apply to the same proceedings. As a result, there is an abundance of decisional law from the pre- Malloy period construing the Indiana right to be free from self-incrimination. Not surprisingly, Indiana self-incrimination doctrine emerged as virtually identical to the federal constitutional right. Many Indiana decisions, based on independent state grounds, in fact preceded and presaged similar rulings from the Supreme Court of the United States. [11] In other instances, judicial development of the Indiana and Fifth Amendment rights to be free from self-incrimination occurred similarly but independently, in some circumstances reaching identical conclusions without reference to relevant authority from the other jurisdiction. Compare Counselman v. Hitchcock, 142 U.S. 547, 12 S.Ct. 195, 35 L.Ed. 1110 (1892) (holding that right was available in grand jury proceedings) with Comer, 157 Ind. at 613, 62 N.E. at 453 (finding the same under Indiana Constitution ten years after Counselman, but without referring to federal jurisprudence). And there are cases in which the Indiana rule was formulated in express reliance on a federal antecedent. See, e.g., Wilson v. Ohio Farmers' Ins. Co., 164 Ind. 462, 73 N.E. 892 (1905) (relying in part on Chief Justice John Marshall's reasoning in the trial of Aaron Burr). The similarity of the text of Section 14 of the Indiana Bill of Rights to its federal counterpart and their parallel judicial history support but do not compel the conclusion that the framers of the Indiana Constitution and the authors of the Fifth Amendment had the same objectives. As Chief Justice Shepard recently put it: Much of the national or federal consensus on the broad outlines of various fundamental rights is the product of cross-breeding between state and federal constitutional discourse. It is hardly surprising then ... that a national synthesis has emerged about the central features of certain core values. Randall T. Shepard, The Maturing Nature of State Constitution Jurisprudence, 30 VAL.U.L.REV. 421, 440-41 (1996) (footnote omitted). Even if no national consensus has emerged on this point, [12] interpretation of a provision of our state constitution consistent with precedent under its federal counterpart is appropriate where the tools for constitutional interpretation point in that direction. Robert F. Williams, In the Glare of the Supreme Court: Continuing Methodology and Legitimacy Problems in Independent State Constitutional Rights Adjudication, 72 NOTRE DAME L.REV. 1015, 1017 (1997). This is true of the core value of the right not to incriminate oneself.