Court Opinion

ID: 9545278
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 17:09:29.418888+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:14:27.046379
License: Public Domain

MR. JUSTICE CARRIGAN
dissenting:
I respectfully dissent.
As Judge Kelly in her well reasoned and thoroughly researched dissent to the court of appeals opinion has pointed out, the testimony obtained in the “civil” contempt proceeding was compelled. Surely this is the substance of the matter, regardless of the form. Indeed it would be difficult to imagine greater judicial compulsion to testify than is exerted against one charged with contempt. The very atmosphere is coercive; the contemnor is cited with an order to show cause why he should not be held in contempt. Incarceration is the implicit — if not the explicit — penalty should he refuse to testify. Here the usual pressures were intensified by the fact that a criminal non-support action based on the same failure to make payments had already been filed.
In such a situation should not a society which takes pride in the fairness of its judicial procedure require some showing that the defendant-contemnor knows he is not required to give evidence which can be used against him in the criminal non-support case?
Judge Kelly appropriately relies upon the provision of the Colorado Constitution which forbids compelling any person “to testify against himself in a criminal case.” Colo. Const. Art. II, §18. Due process concepts of fundamental fairness in criminal proceedings would also require either (1) that the record reflect that the defendant-contemnor was warned that his testimony in the contempt hearing could be used against him in the criminal case, or (2) that the prosecution in the criminal case meet its normal burden of showing that the defendant’s incriminating statement was voluntarily given after a valid waiver of the privilege. Colo. Const. Art. II, §25.
While failure to support one’s children may be a serious crime, it may not be as dangerous to our society in the long run as today’s precedent undermining our historic right against self-incrimination.