Opinion ID: 891596
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Use Immunity versus Transactional Immunity

Text: {11} We first discuss the important difference between use immunity and transactional immunitya distinction that is critical to understanding the basis for our opinion, as well as the shortcomings we perceive in some of our earlier opinions. Transactional immunity involves a promise by prosecutors that a witness will not be prosecuted for crimes related to the events about which the witness testifies. See Piccirillo v. New York, 400 U.S. 548, 569, 91 S.Ct. 520, 27 L.Ed.2d 596 (1971) (Brennan, J., dissenting). In contrast, under a grant of use immunity, the prosecution promises only to refrain from using the testimony in any future prosecution, as well as any evidence derived from the protected testimony. Kastigar, 406 U.S. at 453, 92 S.Ct. 1653. Under use immunity, the prosecution may still proceed with charges against the witness so long as it does not use or rely on the witness's testimony or its fruits. Transactional immunity, on the other hand, affords the witness a much broader immunity related to the entire transaction and not just the witness's testimony. {12} Transactional immunity is broader than the Fifth Amendment privilege. Id. Use immunity, by contrast, is coextensive with the Fifth Amendment privilege. Id. With use immunity, both the prosecution and the witness are left in essentially the same position as if the witness had retained his Fifth Amendment privilege and never testified. The witness is not exposed to criminal liability for testimony given, and the prosecution loses little with respect to its ability to prosecute. All the State surrenders is the ability to use testimony which it otherwise never would have had. See Sanchez, 98 N.M. at 433-34, 649 P.2d at 501-02 (citing Kastigar, 406 U.S. 441, 92 S.Ct. 1653, for proposition that use immunity leaves the witness and the government in substantially the same position as if the witness had claimed his privilege in the absence of a grant of immunity). The State, if it wishes to prosecute, retains the ability to use other, independently obtained evidence such as material it already had, or material it developed independently of the witness's testimony. See United States v. Quatermain, 613 F.2d 38, 40 (3d Cir.1980); see also Kastigar, 406 U.S. at 460, 92 S.Ct. 1653 (noting that after a grant of use immunity, the prosecution has the affirmative duty to prove that the evidence it proposes to use is derived from a legitimate source wholly independent of the compelled testimony). {13} Our older cases occasionally blurred the distinction between use immunity and transactional immunity, and sometimes spoke in overly broad terms by concluding that, absent a constitutional provision or statute, courts could not grant any kind of immunity without prosecutorial consent. See State v. Cheadle, 101 N.M. 282, 286, 681 P.2d 708, 712 (1983); Apodaca v. Viramontes, 53 N.M. 514, 518, 212 P.2d 425, 427 (1949). More recent New Mexico jurisprudence makes clear that only transactional immunity is a legislative prerogative, because it amounts to a decision by the people to exclude an entire class of individuals from application of the state's criminal laws. See State v. Brown, 1998-NMSC-037, ¶ 63, 126 N.M. 338, 969 P.2d 313 (referring to the legislative power of amnesty). Granting use immunity, which is not a form of amnesty, is an inherent function of the judiciary under New Mexico law and is governed by court rule. Id. ¶ 61 (Therefore, to the extent that use immunity serves to compel testimony in a judicial proceeding and serves to establish an evidentiary safeguard to protect the right against self-incrimination, we conclude that it is within our power of `superintending control over all inferior courts' of New Mexico to enact rules governing this type of [use] immunity.).