Opinion ID: 1304136
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: The Scope of Immunity Granted for Compelled Testimony

Text: The next issue requires us to examine the scope of the immunities granted to the various Respondents who were compelled to testify before the State Grand Jury. Respondents Sam, Tom, and Gary Thrift, along with Respondent Rogers Carroll, were compelled to testify before the State Grand Jury under an immunity grant. [9] The grant of immunity has its origins in the Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments to the Constitution of the United States. The framers of the Bill of Rights recognized the dangers inherent in self-incrimination, and as a result, placed in the Fifth Amendment a prohibition against compelling a witness to testify against himself. This prohibition against compelled self-incrimination is a basic constitutional mandate which is not a mere technical rule, but rather, a fundamental right of every citizen in our free society. To this end, the framers of the South Carolina Constitution extended this same protection in our own State Constitution. S.C. Const. art I, § 12. The scope of immunity which is granted a witness compelled to testify against himself is intricately woven in the tapestry of both constitutions, and it is against this tapestry that any immunity from prosecution must be examined. Ordinarily, because of the state and federal protection against self-incrimination, the government may not force any citizen to give testimony against himself. If the government desires to obtain a statement from a citizen which might incriminate him, the government has two options. First, it may obtain from the citizen a voluntary waiver of his right of silence. This waiver cannot be forced or coerced, and the citizen must knowingly give such a waiver after being advised of his right to remain silent and his right to counsel. The second option the government has if it desires to require a citizen to testify against himself is to grant the citizen immunity from prosecution. There are two recognized types of immunity granted by the government to a witness compelled to testify against himself: the broader transactional immunity and the more limited use immunity. Transactional immunity, as the term implies, shields the witness from any prosecution for the transaction or offense to which his compelled testimony relates. See, Murphy v. Waterfront Commission of New York, 378 U.S. 52, 84 S.Ct. 1594, 12 L.Ed.2d 678 (1964). Use immunity, a fairly modern development in Fifth Amendment law, prohibits the witness' compelled testimony and its fruits from being used in any manner in connection with criminal prosecution of the witness. See, Kastigar v. United States, 406 U.S. 441, 92 S.Ct. 1653, 32 L.Ed.2d 212 (1972). Thus, under a grant of use immunity, a potential defendant could be compelled to testify against himself and, nevertheless, be subsequently indicted and prosecuted, provided the information used to obtain the indictment and to prosecute the defendant was obtained by the government from sources completely independent of the witness' compelled testimony. The State, in reliance on S.C.Code Ann. § 14-7-1760 (Supp.1992), argues that the Respondents, Sam, Tom, and Gary Thrift, along with Rogers Carroll, received only use immunity for their testimony before the State Grand Jury. Thus, the State contends these defendants' subsequent indictment by the same State Grand Jury which heard their compelled testimony was proper. At the outset, the Respondents assert that In Re: Hearing Before Joint Legislative Committee, Ex parte Johnson, 187 S.C. 1, 196 S.E. 164 (1938) is controlling. On strikingly similar facts, where a joint legislative committee charged with the investigation of public corruption in various police agencies compelled the testimony of a witness, this Court held that anything less than transactional immunity was unconstitutional under Article I, Section 12 (formerly § 17), of the South Carolina Constitution. In our interpretation of the state constitutional guarantee of freedom from compelled self-incrimination, we held that the federal interpretation of the Fifth Amendment, while persuasive, was not binding. Id. The dangers enumerated in Ex parte Johnson are still present: The immunity is not adequate if it does no more than assure him that the testimony coming from his lips will not be read in evidence against him upon a criminal prosecution. The clues thereby developed may still supply the links whereby a chain of guilt can be forged from the testimony of others. To force disclosure from unwilling lips, the immunity must be so broad that risk of prosecution is ended altogether. Id. at 13, 196 S.E. at 169. Today the evidence derived from use immunized testimony still leads to other facts which can be used independently as a basis for prosecution. The mere prohibition against using the actual words of a witness in a criminal prosecution offers very little constitutional protection. Immunized testimony must be coextensive with the right against compelled self-incrimination, or the right ceases to exist. The trial court and the State have followed and cited the decision of the United States Supreme Court in Kastigar v. United States, 406 U.S. 441, 453, 92 S.Ct. 1653, 32 L.Ed.2d 212 (1972). This landmark decision of federal constitutional law, for the first time, examined the constitutionality of limited use immunity in the context of a 1970 statute enacted by Congress creating use immunity. Id. Under the federal statute, which is similar to the disputed provisions of S.C.Code Ann. § 14-7-1760 (Supp.1992), a person could be compelled to give up his Fifth Amendment rights and testify before a federal tribunal under a grant of immunity which is limited to a restriction on the use of his testimony or its fruits. Id. In upholding the constitutionality of this statute, the Kastigar court adopted a system of minimum procedural safeguards for protection of Fifth Amendment rights, whereby a hearing is conducted in which the burden is on the government to demonstrate that its indictment of a use immunity defendant is grounded on information totally independent of the immunized testimony. While Kastigar appears to allay the fears expressed in Ex parte Johnson, this is only an illusion. The potential for Double Jeopardy problems in prosecutions of use immunized witnesses and the constitutional implications of indictments by the same grand jury which heard use immunized testimony are only a few examples of the issues which continue to plague the federal system. See United States v. Hinton, 543 F.2d 1002 (2d Cir.), cert. denied 429 U.S. 980, 1051, 1066, 97 S.Ct. 493, 764, 796, 50 L.Ed.2d 589, 767, 783, 430 U.S. 982, 97 S.Ct. 1677, 52 L.Ed.2d 376 (1976); see also, United States v. Zielenzinski, 740 F.2d 727 (9th Cir.1984). [10] The continuing confusion in the federal courts convinces us that the rule in Ex parte Johnson is sound and quite necessary to protect the tenets of the South Carolina Constitution. Where the government compels a witness to incriminate himself, then by constitutional necessity, the government must do so at its own peril. The State argues that Ex parte Johnson was effectively overruled in S.C. Tax Commission v. Reeves, 278 S.C. 658, 300 S.E.2d 916 (1983) (where a custodian of partnership records could not assert his personal right against compelled self-incrimination). In Reeves, we simply did not view the pertinent language of the South Carolina Constitution as prohibiting the disclosure of partnership records. Id. As we noted in Ex parte Johnson, the freedom from self-incrimination attaches to the individual. In Reeves, we held the single partner possessing records in a representative capacity could not rely on his individual privilege to avoid producing the partnership's records. In the present instance, the Fifth Amendment, and more specifically the state constitutional right, clearly attaches to the individual Respondents. Our decision in Reeves did not overrule Ex parte Johnson, and is not controlling on the present facts. Subsequent to our decision in Ex parte Johnson, which established transactional immunity as the constitutional standard in South Carolina, our General Assembly provided for a State Grand Jury and adopted an accompanying immunity statute. In 1987, when the immunity statute was first adopted, it provided the broader transactional immunity for compelled testimony. In May of 1992, when the State Grand Jury Act was amended to give jurisdiction over public corruption, the General Assembly also narrowed the immunity provisions to give only use immunity for compelled testimony. The unavoidable dilemma facing us is the conflict between the State Constitution and the new use immunity statute in the State Grand Jury Act. The interpretation of the State Constitution announced in Ex parte Johnson is dispositive. Article I, § 12 permits only transactional immunity and as such can only be amended by the citizens of South Carolina by referendum. Absent a constitutional amendment, we have no other course but to hold unconstitutional so much of S.C.Code Ann. § 14-7-1760 (Supp.1992) as restricts the immunity granted a compelled witness before the State Grand Jury to use immunity. [11] It was uncontroverted that the Respondents, who were compelled to testify under use immunity, were indicted after giving their compelled testimony by the same grand jury that heard their immunized testimony. Evidence was also placed before the trial judge that a witness' demeanor, and even answers which conflict with earlier testimony, can motivate a grand jury to indict an individual. The defense evidence coupled with the timing of the indictments reinforces the fears expressed in Ex parte Johnson. Because we hold that only transactional immunity exists under the South Carolina Constitution, we also hold that since the indictments brought against Tom Thrift, Sam Thrift, Gary Thrift, and Rogers Carroll were obtained in violation of their state constitutional rights against compelled self-incrimination, they must be dismissed. [12]