Opinion ID: 552750
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Problem with the Original Opinion

Text: 40 The Supreme Court has recognized that use immunity is coextensive with the fifth amendment privilege. Accordingly, restrictions on the use of immunized testimony are exacting. 41 [T]he prosecution [bears] the affirmative duty to prove that the evidence it proposes to use is derived from a legitimate source wholly independent of the compelled testimony. 42 Kastigar v. United States, 406 U.S. 441, 460, 92 S.Ct. 1653, 1665, 32 L.Ed.2d 212 (1972). 43 This very substantial protection, id. at 461, 92 S.Ct. at 1665, while reflecting the importance of the constitutional values at stake, was not meant to make the prosecution's burden an impossible one. The use-immunity statute makes a precise accommodation between the privilege against self-incrimination and the public's legitimate interest in securing testimony; use immunity thus exists in a delicate tension with the fifth amendment. 44 By mandating additional--and practically unattainable--requirements not found in Kastigar itself, my colleagues have upset this tension. They have rendered impossible in virtually all cases the prosecution of persons whose immunized testimony is of such national significance as to be the subject of congressional hearings and media coverage. In their opinions, my colleagues have ruled that Kastigar requires at least four distinct showings, only the first two of which can be derived from Kastigar itself. First, the prosecutors must demonstrate that they avoided significant exposure to the immunized testimony. Majority Opinion (Maj. op.) at 859. Second, the prosecution must demonstrate that its identification and questioning of witnesses was based solely on independent leads--without the use of immunized testimony. Maj. op. at 863. Third--a new requirement, appearing for the first time in the opinion denying rehearing--the prosecution must demonstrate that the immunized testimony did not motivate[ ]  its witnesses to testify. Opinion on Petition for Rehearing at 942. And fourth, the prosecution must demonstrate that the testimony of witnesses exposed to immunized matter has been  'canned' by the prosecution before such exposure. Maj. op. at 872. 45 The last and most stringent of these requirements--that witness testimony be pre-recorded--is certainly an unwarranted departure from current law. For this reason, it deserves quotation at some length. 46 [T]he District Court must hold a full Kastigar hearing that will inquire into the content as well as the sources of the grand jury and trial witnesses' testimony. That inquiry must proceed witness-by-witness; if necessary, it will proceed line-by-line and item-by-item. For each grand jury and trial witness, the prosecution must show by a preponderance of the evidence that no use whatsoever was made of any of the immunized testimony either by the witness or by the Office of Independent Counsel in questioning the witness. This burden may be met by establishing that the witness was never exposed to North's immunized testimony, or that the allegedly tainted testimony contains no evidence not canned by the prosecution before such exposure occurred. 47 Maj. op. at 872-873 (latter emphasis supplied). Although my colleagues now maintain that they did not intend to rule that pre-recording was the only way the prosecution could demonstrate that the testimony of a witness exposed to immunized testimony was admissible, the words of the per curiam are clear: either can the witness or can his testimony. 1 48 My colleagues invoke United States v. Rinaldi, 808 F.2d 1579 (D.C.Cir.1987), to support that radical extension of current law. Yet Rinaldi does not even suggest that the witness' original knowledge need be or was pre-recorded. Instead, the Rinaldi court indicated a far more lenient rule of inevitable discovery--the prosecution need only show that the police would inevitably have learned the [facts] from [the witness]. 808 F.2d at 1583 (emphasis supplied). As set forth in my original dissent and outlined below, I believe that Judge Gesell's findings clearly established such inevitable discovery. See Dissenting Opinion (Diss. op.) at 917, 922-923. 49 My colleagues' extension of Kastigar is infirm not only because, as the IC suggests, it is unrooted in existing law, but also because it effectively emasculates both use immunity and the Office of the Independent Counsel. 50 A uniform requirement of pre-recording witness knowledge in exquisite detail is unworkable. As even the greenest trial lawyer knows, the accrual of evidence is interactive--the statements of one witness often suggest new questions for earlier witnesses. Pre-recording of every line of every witness' trial testimony in every prosecution in which a defendant might publicly offer immunized testimony would ultimately prove unfeasible. 51 The consequences of a pre-recording requirement are both predictable and troubling. Prospective targets of grand juries in national scandals would line up to testify before Congress, in exchange for what is effectively transaction immunity. A requirement of nonuse would be converted into a guarantee of nonprosecution. Moreover, as the IC notes, with regard to crimes involving government corruption, the IC and Congress have parallel responsibilities. Petition at n. 1. A pre-recording requirement compels Congress to delay congressional hearings until all of the testimony of all potential witnesses has been pre-recorded; in doing so, this requirement unduly burdens Congress' exercise of its legitimate authority to hold important public hearings. 52 The Supreme Court has said that use immunity grants neither pardon nor amnesty. Kastigar, 406 U.S. at 461, 92 S.Ct. at 1665. But the majority's excruciatingly heightened Kastigar requirements run counter to Congress' express assertion that the [use-immunity] provision is not an 'immunity bath.'  H.Rep. No. 91-1188, 91st Cong., 2d Sess. at 12 (1970) (citing United States v. Monia, 317 U.S. 424, 63 S.Ct. 409, 87 L.Ed. 376 (1943)). 53 The interpretation of Kastigar offered in the original per curiam opinion also conflicts with the congressionally-bestowed responsibilities of the IC. Congress created the IC Office pursuant to its Article II authority to enact laws to guard against the evils of massive conflicts of interest involved in the enforcement of federal criminal law against the highest officials of government. In re Olson, 818 F.2d 34, 43 (D.C.Cir.Indep.Couns.Div.1987) (emphasis in original). Congress acted on the basis of 54 fifty years of the nation's history involving the Teapot Dome, Truman Administration, and Watergate scandals [which] demonstrated a generally recognized inability of the Department of Justice and the Attorney General to function impartially with full public confidence in investigating criminal wrongdoing of high-ranking government officials.... 55 818 F.2d at 42. Accordingly, the IC Office serves a critical role in our constitutional system of checks and balances. See generally Morrison v. Olson, 487 U.S. 654, 108 S.Ct. 2597, 101 L.Ed.2d 569 (1988). It safeguards the primary precondition for government under law: that no one sit in judgment of his or her own case. 56 My colleagues' extension of Kastigar thwarts Congress' central purpose in creating the Office of the IC. Congress required the appointed counsel to be truly independent and its authority exclusive; Congress thus required that the Department of Justice, the Attorney General, and all other officers and employees of the Department ... suspend all investigations and proceedings on matters within the IC's jurisdiction. 28 U.S.C. Sec. 597. Yet in its expansive interpretation of Kastigar, the majority provides an easy out for conflicted government officials; they can immunize their colleagues from prosecution by exposing themselves to immunized testimony. In this case it was insiders--high government officials--who soaked themselves in North's immunized testimony. To raise an insurmountable bar against the admission of the testimony of these officials, however necessary it might be to the prosecution, critically undermines the authority and independence of the IC in cases of self-defined conflict on the part of government officials. 57 The majority is correct in noting that, if Kastigar is read only to apply to exposure of prosecutors, then a private lawyer for a witness sympathetic to the government could listen to the compelled testimony and use it to prepare the witness. Opinion on Petition for Rehearing at 942. But it is also true that if Kastigar is read to require pre-recording of all government-witness testimony, then a witness hostile to the government could listen to the compelled testimony and use it to insulate himself from testifying. 58 There must be a middle ground, and I believe the case should be reheard (by the panel or en banc ) to find it. The significance of these issues for the prosecution of future governmental scandals and for the effective functioning of separation of powers is too great to let the overreach of the original opinion (or my colleagues' undefined backtracking) stand. 59