Opinion ID: 1721404
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 17

Heading: Questions Lacking Pertinency.

Text: Throughout the interrogation of several of the appellants, counsel for the Committee would ask the witness; for example, Do you know Bertha Teplow, or Do you know Anna Rosenblatt? We point out that the questions quoted are merely illustrative of a type of interrogation. To illustrate the point we are about to make we mention a question appearing elsewhere in this opinion where a witness was asked, Do you know Arlington Sands, and the counsel for the Committee supplemented his question by explaining that a previous witness had testified that Arlington Sands was a suspected member of the Communist Party, thereby demonstrating the pertinency of the inquiry. We have held this to be a pertinent and proper question. However, we think that in the absence of a showing of pertinency by relating the name of the person to a proper subject of the inquiry, the bald question, such as, Do you know Bertha Teplow, would not in and of itself be pertinent to the inquiry within the rules which we have hereinabove announced. Had counsel gone further, as he did in the Arlington Sands question, and explained the pertinency of the question by stating the relationship between Bertha Teplow and the subject of the inquiry, then it would have been proper to have required an answer. However, until such pertinency is made clear to the witness, he would be justified in declining to answer on the ground of lack of pertinency. In these instances, therefore, we are compelled to disagree with the trial judge and his order directing answers to particular questions of which these are illustrative will have to be reversed. In an investigation of this nature, unless the pertinency of the question is indisputably clear, when a witness objects on grounds of lack of pertinency it is the duty of the investigative body to point out the manner in which the propounded question is pertinent to the subject of the inquiry. Watkins v. United States, supra.