Opinion ID: 526041
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: applicable fifth amendment principles

Text: 27 We start our analysis by referring to three basic legal principles that have animated the application of the fifth amendment privilege against self-incrimination. The first principle is that invocation of the right must be given a liberal construction. 28 This guarantee against testimonial compulsion, like other provisions of 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. Feldman v. United States, 322 U.S. 487, 489 [64 S.Ct. 1082, 1083, 88 L.Ed. 1408] (1944). This provision of the Amendment must be accorded liberal construction in favor of the right it was intended to secure. Counselman v. Hitchcock, 142 U.S. 547, 562 [12 S.Ct. 195, 197-198, 35 L.Ed. 1110] (1892); Arndstein v. McCarthy, 254 U.S. 71, 72-73 [41 S.Ct. 26, 29, 65 L.Ed. 138] (1920). 29 Hoffman v. United States, 341 U.S. 479, 486, 71 S.Ct. 814, 818, 95 L.Ed. 1118 (1951); accord, In re Brogna, 589 F.2d 24, 27 (1st Cir.1978); In re Kave, 760 F.2d 343, 354 (1st Cir.1985). This constitutional protection must not be interpreted in a hostile or niggardly spirit. Ullmann v. United States, 350 U.S. 422, 426, 76 S.Ct. 497, 500, 100 L.Ed. 511 (1956). [E]ven the most feeble attempt to claim a Fifth Amendment privilege must be recognized.... United States v. Goodwin, 470 F.2d 893, 902 (5th Cir.1972), cert. denied, 411 U.S. 969, 93 S.Ct. 2160, 36 L.Ed.2d 691 (1973). 30 The second principle is that invocation of the privilege against self-incrimination does not turn on a person's choice of words. It is agreed by all that a claim of the [fifth amendment] privilege [against self-incrimination] does not require any special combination of words. Quinn v. United States, 349 U.S. 155, 162, 75 S.Ct. 668, 673, 99 L.Ed. 964 (1955). 31 [N]o magic language or ritualistic formula is required to assert the [fifth amendment] privilege [against self-incrimination] which is effectively invoked by any language which the court should reasonably be expected to understand as an attempt to claim the privilege. 32 State v. Bell, 112 N.H. 444, 446, 298 A.2d 753, 756 (1972) (Kenison, C.J.) (citing Quinn, 349 U.S. at 163, 75 S.Ct. at 673); see Securities and Exchange Comm. v. Howatt, 525 F.2d 226, 230 (1st Cir.1975) (citing Quinn, 349 U.S. 155, 75 S.Ct. at 668). And in determining whether the privilege has been invoked, the entire context in which the claimant spoke must be considered. United States v. Goodwin, 470 F.2d at 902. 33 The third basic principle is that application of the privilege is not limited to persons in custody or charged with a crime; it may also be asserted by a suspect who is questioned during the investigation of a crime. The right to remain silent, unlike the right to counsel, attaches before the institution of formal adversary proceedings. United States ex rel. Savory v. Lane, 832 F.2d 1011, 1017 (7th Cir.1987). The privilege can be asserted in any proceeding, civil or criminal, administrative or judicial, investigatory or adjudicatory.... Kastigar v. United States, 406 U.S. 441, 444, 92 S.Ct. 1653, 1656, 32 L.Ed.2d 212 (1972); cf. Hoffman v. United States, 341 U.S. at 486-87, 71 S.Ct. at 818-19 (viability of the privilege depends on whether a responsive answer to the question might result in harmful disclosure); In re Kave, 760 F.2d at 354 (witness in a master's inquiry may invoke the privilege if there is a reasonable possibility of prosecution). With these principles as a starting point, we turn to the New Hampshire Supreme Court opinion. 34 To begin with, we respectfully disagree with the New Hampshire Supreme Court's observation that 35 pre-Miranda express refusals to confess ... may be admitted without compromising the interests addressed by the fifth amendment, even assuming that the fifth amendment could be held applicable to prearrest silence, see Jenkins v. Anderson, supra at 236 n. 2, and at 242, [100 S.Ct. at 2128 n. 2 and at 2131] (Stevens, J., concurring), or to bar evidence of such silence in the State's case in chief. 36 Coppola, 130 N.H. at 153, 536 A.2d at 1239. In Jenkins v. Anderson, 447 U.S. 231, 100 S.Ct. 2124, 65 L.Ed.2d 86 (1980), the Court held that the use of prearrest silence to impeach a defendant's credibility does not violate the Constitution. Id. at 240-41, 100 S.Ct. at 2130-31. In Jenkins, the prearrest silence was just that: Defendant claimed at trial that he had stabbed the victim in self-defense, but he had failed to say anything to anybody about the stabbing or report the victim's death for two weeks. His silence was used to impeach his trial assertion of self-defense. In the case at bar, we are concerned with the use of a statement made by a suspect and used by the prosecutor in his case in chief, not the use of silence to impeach the defendant's credibility. 37 Our next disagreement with the New Hampshire court is its statement that if petitioner had couched his refusal in terms of speech versus silence, it might be arguable that he was claiming a constitutional warrant for his action. Coppola, 130 N.H. at 152, 536 A.2d at 1239. This runs counter to the liberal interpretation that should be accorded invocation of the privilege and the principle that a claim of the privilege does not depend upon any special combination of words. The cases discussed infra make it clear that the protection of the privilege does not depend on a semantic formula. 38 Our most emphatic difference with the New Hampshire Supreme Court focuses on its statement: By describing his choice as a refusal to confess, he implied that he had done something to confess about. It was this implication that took the defendant's retort outside the realm of allusions to the fifth amendment and affirmatively indicated his consciousness of guilt. Coppola, 130 N.H. at 152-53, 536 A.2d at 1239. This language amounts to a rule of evidence whereby an inference of consciousness of guilt will trump a fifth amendment claim of the privilege. Any refusal to speak, no matter how couched, in the face of police interrogation, raises an inference that the person being questioned probably has something to hide. Under the reasoning of the New Hampshire court any prearrest invocation of the privilege, no matter how worded, could be used by the prosecutor in his case in chief because it raises an inference of guilt. Such logic ignores the teaching that the protection of the fifth amendment is not limited to those in custody or charged with a crime. See cases infra. The words of a former great judge of this circuit, Chief Judge Magruder, bear repeating: 39 Our forefathers, when they wrote this provision into the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution, had in mind a lot of history which has been largely forgotten to-day. See VIII Wigmore on Evidence (3d ed. 1940) Sec. 2250 et seq.; Morgan, The Privilege Against Self-Incrimination, 34 Minn.L.Rev. 1 (1949). They made a judgment and expressed it in our fundamental law, that it were better for an occasional crime to go unpunished than that the prosecution should be free to build up a criminal case, in whole or in part, with the assistance of enforced disclosures by the accused. The privilege against self-incrimination serves as a protection to the innocent as well as to the guilty, and we have been admonished that it should be given a liberal application. Hoffman v. United States, 1951, 341 U.S. 479, 486, 71 S.Ct. 814, 95 L.Ed. 1118. If it be thought that the privilege is outmoded in the conditions of this modern age, then the thing to do is to take it out of the Constitution, not to whittle it down by the subtle encroachments of judicial opinion. 40 Maffie v. United States, 209 F.2d 225, 227 (1st Cir.1954). If the implication of guilt takes the refusal to confess outside the realm of allusions to the fifth amendment, Coppola, 130 N.H. at 152-53, 536 A.2d at 1239, we believe that the equally persuasive implication that a constitutional right was being asserted brings it right back in. 41 We close our critique of the opinion of the New Hampshire Supreme Court by noting that it characterized petitioner's statement as a taunt to the police, a defiant remark betraying petitioner's sophistication. Coppola, 130 N.H. at 150-52, 536 A.2d at 1238-39. We do not quarrel with the court's characterization but wonder what bearing it has on the question whether petitioner effectively invoked his privilege against self-incrimination. 42