Opinion ID: 552750
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Kastigar REQUIREMENTS

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
60 No prior decision has articulated the proceedings Kastigar requires in cases involving widely disseminated immunized testimony. The trial judge here labored in uncharted territory. In cases like North's several goals and values must be accommodated: the immunized person's fifth amendment privilege; Congress' purposes in enacting the use-immunity statute; the function and integrity of the Office of the IC; and the government's need for workable guidelines. 61 As the IC's petition highlights, the central conceptual weakness of the majority's analysis is its failure to recognize that a prosecutor's exposure to immunized testimony and a witness' independent exposure to such testimony raise related but distinct issues. By holding to the same standard witnesses who have thoroughly soaked themselves in immunized testimony and prosecutors who have assiduously avoided the slightest taint, the majority renders virtually impossible any prosecution of an immunized defendant who testifies publicly. 62 Prosecutorial use of immunized testimony is the paradigmatic violation of the use-immunity statute and prosecutorial exposure is, thus, at the heart of use immunity. Indeed, as the IC's petition points out, virtually every prior case concerning use immunity involved prosecutorial knowledge of immunized testimony. We all agree that prosecutors must avoid significant exposure to immunized testimony, develop independent leads to witnesses, and refrain from using immunized testimony to lead or coach those witnesses. In this regard, the prosecution bears the continuous and uninterrupted burden of persuasion, and in this case, no one disputes that the IC has met that burden. Maj. op. at 859; Diss. op. at 921. 63 Independent witness exposure poses a different problem. Despite the prosecution's diligent, and often extraordinary, prophylactic measures, witnesses may, for a variety of reasons, soak themselves or be soaked by others in immunized testimony. For such witnesses, the prosecutor's burden to show nonuse should arguably be quite different. Initially, the prosecutor must establish a prima facie case that a witness' testimony does not constitute a prohibited use. This initial burden should, however, be met, as it was in the North case, by a five-factored showing: 64 (i) the prosecution must demonstrate that the identification of witnesses was wholly independent from immunized testimony; 65 (ii) the prosecution must demonstrate that the questions it directs to witnesses are wholly independent from immunized testimony; 66 (iii) at any grand jury proceedings, the prosecution must direct witnesses to base their answers solely on personal knowledge; 67 (iv) at trial, the judge must similarly instruct witnesses; and 68 (v) before the trial begins, the prosecution must deliver to the defense all recorded statements of witnesses, including grand jury testimony and any other interviews or statements. 2 69 Collectively, these requirements should be sufficient to establish a prima facie case that any testimony offered at trial by the IC is untainted. 70 Upon establishment of a prima facie case, the defense then bears a burden to produce some specific evidence that the testimony--either in source or content--is tainted; upon such production, the court is required to hold a hearing on the alleged taint. The defense need only produce specific, not conclusive evidence, for as Kastigar suggests, the prosecution always bears the burden of ultimate persuasion. Specific evidence might include a pattern of recollection or specificity that suggests taint, or contradictions between recorded and unrecorded testimony. As the Supreme Court stated in another allocation-of-burdens context, [i]t is sufficient [that] the defendant's evidence raises a genuine issue of fact as to whether the witness' testimony is tainted. Texas Department of Community Affairs v. Burdine, 450 U.S. 248, 254, 101 S.Ct. 1089, 1094, 67 L.Ed.2d 207 (1981). 71 This allocation of burdens would be one way to reconcile the several constitutional values and statutory commands implicated by prosecutions like North's. As the Supreme Court has noted 72 This burden-shifting principle is not new or novel. There are no hard-and-fast standards governing the allocation of the burden of proof in every situation. The issue, rather, is merely a question of policy and fairness based on experience in the different situations. 73 Keyes v. School District No. 1, 413 U.S. 189, 209, 93 S.Ct. 2686, 2698, 37 L.Ed.2d 548 (1973) (citations omitted). 74 Whether or not the best resolution of these values lies in burden shifting, the important thing is that the use-immunity statute be construed so as to accommodate the real difference between prosecutorial exposure and use--the central danger posed by use immunity--and witness exposure, which is more diffuse and beyond the immediate control of the prosecution. Respecting this critical difference, this court should seek to provide a workable and attainable standard that guarantees the integrity of use immunity while allowing for a cautious and untainted prosecution.
75 My earlier dissent cataloged the thorough, if tedious, Kastigar procedures employed by the trial court. Diss. op. at 914-917. These efforts--unrebutted by any showing of taint by the defense--ensured that there was no use of North's immunized testimony and thus no reversible error. 76 The trial court clearly and correctly found that the IC office fully insulated itself from exposure to immunized testimony. 77 The content of the testimony of all but one of the relevant grand jury witnesses was canned before North testified--and the testimony of that witness was cumulative with other canned testimony. 78 The court's preliminary Kastigar finding--analogous to the prima facie showing suggested above--was based on a thorough reading of preliminary witness interviews and the grand jury record. 3 79 The trial court precisely and cautiously instructed trial witnesses to testify based solely on personal knowledge; indeed, the court instructed that any doubt should be resolved in favor of not testifying. 4 Based on knowledge of the preliminary interviews and grand jury testimony, the court was able to determine that no tainted testimony was introduced at trial. 80 The IC delivered relevant grand jury testimony to the defense, enabling the latter to challenge any testimony as tainted. 81 Upon consideration of North's post-trial motion for a second Kastigar hearing--analogous to the burden of production suggested above--the court found few new issues and no new information suggesting taint, and, accordingly, denied the motion. 82 Taken together, all of these procedural protections and the continued diligence of the trial court made clear that no testimony was tainted by North's immunized testimony and thus that no illegal use of immunized testimony was made. The majority's remand for a line-by-line re-examination of the source (and perhaps the motivation) of the testimony of every prosecution witness and its mandate that the prosecution prove--by pre-testimony canning or some undefined functional equivalent--that all testimony was untainted represents an unneeded and unprecedented incursion into the trial court's discretion in managing a fair trial. 5