Court Opinion

ID: 9443711
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 19:28:39.752425+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:29:34.967421
License: Public Domain

SANBORN, Circuit Judge
(concurring).
I have no doubt that as a practical matter the District Court’s estimate of the situation of Charles E. Kiewel as a witness before the grand jury was correct and that he was never in any real danger of incriminating himself. The danger was that he would or might incriminate others who had accepted contributions out of a “slush fund” formerly maintained by the Minneapolis Brewing Company. His interest was in protecting them, and not himself, but, as Judge Collet has pointed out, it was not utterly inconceivable that Kiewel’s evidence might have disclosed that he had been dipping into the fund himself or that some of the withdrawals made by him for others might have been taxable *8to him as his income and have been unreported. • •
Realistically, I think that Kiewel was guilty of contempt in refusing to give the grand jury the information it was seeking. From a theoretical standpoint, it can be argued that he was in some slight danger of incriminating himself and therefore could not be adjudged guilty;
The opinion of Judge Hastie in United States v. Coffey, 3 Cir., 198 F.2d 438, shows how difficult it is, under the recent decisions of the Supreme Court, to sustain a judgment for contempt in a case such as the instant case. In the Coffey case, the Court of Appeals said, pages 440-441 of 198 F.2d:
“*_ * * It iS enough (1) that the trial court be shown by argument how conceivably a prosecutor, building on the seemingly harmless answer, might proceed step by step to link the witness with some crime against the United States, and (2) that this suggested course and scheme of linkage not seem incredible in the circumstances of the particular case. * * *
“Finally, in determining whether the witness really apprehends danger in answering a question, the judge cannot permit himself to be skeptical; rather must he be acutely aware that in the deviousness of crime and its detection incrimination may be approached and achieved by obscure and unlikely lines of inquiry.”
I concur in the reversal of the order appealed from.