Opinion ID: 397401
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Use Immunity for Defense Witnesses

Text: 75 Appellants filed a pre-trial motion seeking judicial use immunity for George Thevis, 23 father of appellant Michael Thevis. They advised the court that George Thevis' testimony was crucial to the defense, but that he would invoke the fifth amendment if called to testify. The court permitted the defense to proffer George Thevis' expected testimony in camera, ex parte. As summarized by the appellants: 76 George Thevis would have testified that he was with Thevis and Hood on October 25, 1978, from 11:00 a. m. to 11:40 a. m., at the Journey's End Motel. Hood and George Thevis then left Thevis for about twenty minutes. Appellant Thevis was still at the motel when they returned. The three of them stayed together until about 1:00 p. m. George Thevis refused to testify because of potential prosecution for harboring his son, who was then an escaped prisoner. 77 The trial court held that it lacked authority to grant immunity to any witness. Before this court, appellants concede that the court lacked statutory authority to grant immunity, see United States v. Smith, 436 F.2d 787 (5th Cir.), cert. denied, 402 U.S. 976, 91 S.Ct. 1680, 29 L.Ed.2d 142 (1971); they contend, however, that a defendant's due process right to a fair trial gives trial courts inherent authority to confer use immunity. Appellants' due process argument subdivides into two parts. First they claim that because George Thevis' testimony was exculpatory and unavailable from any other source, due process requires immunity to preserve the integrity of the truth-finding function. Second they urge that the government's granting immunity to its witnesses while denying immunity to George Thevis skewed the evidence against appellants and denied them a fair trial. 78 The Supreme Court has not decided whether courts may grant defense witnesses use immunity, and the circuit courts which have addressed the issue have produced widely divergent opinions. On the question whether judicial use immunity is necessary for essential exculpatory testimony, the courts have split three ways. The Third Circuit, in Virgin Islands v. Smith, 615 F.2d 964 (3d Cir. 1980) held that such immunity is available in certain circumstances. 24 On the other hand, the Seventh, Eighth and District of Columbia Circuits have held that such immunity is unavailable. In Re Daley, 549 F.2d 469, 479 (7th Cir. 1976), cert. denied, 434 U.S. 829, 98 S.Ct. 110, 54 L.Ed.2d 89 (1977); United States v. Graham, 548 F.2d 1302, 1315 (8th Cir. 1976); United States v. Smith, 542 F.2d 711, 715 (7th Cir. 1976); Earl v. United States, 361 F.2d 531, 534-35 (D.C.Cir.1966), cert. denied, 388 U.S. 921, 87 S.Ct. 2121, 18 L.Ed.2d 1370 (1967) (dealing with transactional immunity). The remaining circuits which have addressed the issue have denied immunity in the specific cases before them, but left open whether immunity would ever be available. United States v. Turkish, 623 F.2d 769, 771-79 (2d Cir. 1980), cert. denied, 449 U.S. 1077, 101 S.Ct. 856, 66 L.Ed.2d 800 (1981); United States v. Lenz, 616 F.2d 960, 962-64 (6th Cir.), cert. denied, 447 U.S. 929, 100 S.Ct. 3028, 65 L.Ed.2d 1124 (1980); United States v. Klauber, 611 F.2d 512, 517-20 (4th Cir. 1979), cert. denied, 446 U.S. 908, 100 S.Ct. 1835, 64 L.Ed.2d 261 (1980); United States v. Alessio, 528 F.2d 1079, 1081-82 (9th Cir.), cert. denied, 426 U.S. 948, 96 S.Ct. 3167, 49 L.Ed.2d 1184 (1976). 79 The Fifth Circuit has not explicitly determined whether due process may require a court to grant a defense witness use immunity. 25 We conclude, however, after reviewing the various circuit opinions and conflicting policy arguments, that district courts may not grant immunity to defense witnesses simply because that witness has essential exculpatory information unavailable from other sources. As noted by the Second Circuit in Turkish, supra, the two major arguments against granting such judicial use immunity are that the immunity decision would carry the courts into policy assessments which are the traditional domain of the executive branch, and that the immunity would be subject to abuse. 80 We find these arguments persuasive, and agree that the immunity decision requires a balancing of public interests which should be left to the executive branch. While a grant of use immunity theoretically does not improve the legal position of the person immunized, in that he still can be prosecuted for his crime, in practice the burden placed on the government to prove that any evidence obtained against the immunized suspect is not tainted by the suspect's statement can significantly impair future prosecutions. 26 As the Second Circuit observed, (C)onfronting the prosecutor with a choice between terminating prosecution of the defendant or jeopardizing prosecution of the witness is not a task congenial to the judicial function. Turkish, supra, at 776. See id. at 779 (Lumbard, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part). An immunity decision, moreover, would require a trial judge, in order to properly assess the possible harm to public interests of an immunity grant, to examine pre-trial all the facts and circumstances surrounding the government's investigation of the case. Such collateral inquiries would necessitate a significant expenditure of judicial energy, possibly to the detriment of the judicial process overall, and would risk jeopardizing the impartiality and objectivity of the judge at trial. Id. 81 Nor are we convinced that any safeguards imposed on the grant of judicial use immunity adequately reduces the risk of abuse by co-defendants, co-conspirators, friends, or employees. 27 Whatever may be gained in fairness in a particular trial in which true exculpatory evidence may be obtained only through judicial use immunity, therefore, may well be lost through the subsequent effect of abuse on the integrity of the judicial process as a whole. Finally, we note that the fifth amendment privilege is not the only one which may suppress probative evidence from the judicial process; crucial facts, for example, also may be shielded from disclosure by the attorney-client or doctor-patient privilege. Although abrogating the fifth amendment privilege through general use immunity for exculpatory testimony may conflict less with important public interests than abrogating these other privileges, we conclude that the potential interference is nevertheless great enough that the legislature, rather than the courts, should decide on such a course. 82 Appellants' second argument, that governmental abuse of the immunity process might warrant judicially-compelled use immunity, presents a more compelling case. Some of the courts rejecting a general due-process-based use immunity for exculpatory testimony have nevertheless indicated that governmental abuse might present a different situation. E. g., Klauber, supra, at 517-19 (distinguishing abuse cases); Earl, supra, at 534 n.1. Two federal cases which granted immunity, moreover, arguably involved abuse situations. United States v. Morrison, 535 F.2d 223 (3d Cir. 1976) (government, after previously showing no interest in prosecuting potential witness, threatened prosecution after witness decided to testify for defendant); United States v. De Palma, 476 F.Supp. 775 (S.D.N.Y.1979) (government's choosing among potential defendants, granting immunity to two for their testimony against a third). Finally, Supreme Court precedent supports the proposition that the government cannot so abuse its discretion as to render the trial unfair. E. g., Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83, 83 S.Ct. 1194, 10 L.Ed.2d 215 (1963) (government has a general duty to disclose exculpatory evidence). 83 We, however, need not decide in this case if a court may grant immunity when it finds government abuse, 28 because we conclude that no abuse occurred in the prosecution of Michael Thevis. George Thevis' testimony was offered to prove a specific point at issue in the trial: whether Michael Thevis and Bart Hood were present at the scene of the Underhill-Galanti murders. The government evidence placing Thevis and Hood at the scene consisted entirely of non-immunized testimony; 29 hence, no abuse occurred. We conclude, therefore, that under the circumstances, the trial court did not err in refusing to grant George Thevis use immunity.