Court Opinion

ID: 9468275
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 02:09:56.483611+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:40:47.506273
License: Public Domain

MERRITT, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
The Court holds that a person suffers no detriment at all when compelled to testify *92in exchange for a grant of immunity and therefore no notice or hearing in advance is necessary because no liberty interest is at stake. I disagree with this reasoning.
The Fifth Amendment privilege — molded over the centuries in the courage of Sir Thomas More and many others who chose to remain silent in the face of government persecution — is an important liberty, like freedom of speech and conscience. Before a witness is threatened with jail if he refuses to speak, he should at least be entitled to notice and a hearing. The witness may want to explain to the court that in his opinion he or members of his family will be killed if compelled to speak and that use immunity alone is not protection. He may want to contest the materiality of his possible testimony. He may want the court to limit the government’s use of his testimony in certain ways set out in the immunity statute. He may want the injunctive order against him to include orders against his adversary, the government, regarding the way his testimony may be used and what may be disclosed to others.
The immunity statute specifically provides that only an Article III judge — not the Attorney General or the Deputy Attorney General or some other officer — may compel testimony in return for immunity. The statute contemplates a judicial proceeding, a decision by a court of law. Surely the person whose liberty interest is at stake in that proceeding — the witness — is entitled to notice and an opportunity to attend and speak. The person whose interest is most at stake should be consulted and allowed to participate in the proceeding.
Why should the person most affected not receive advance notice and an opportunity for a hearing? Neither the government nor the court has offered a good reason, and I can think of none. It costs the government nothing. The need for surprise is not present, as in the case of search warrants. The element of serious administrative delay and added financial costs are not present, as in the case of the issuance of ordinary, trial subpoenas. The government gains nothing by refusing to give notice and an opportunity to be heard, except avoiding a minor inconvenience.
“No person . . . shall be compelled ... to be a witness against himself.” Before a person is compelled to divulge his private thoughts and actions in exchange for use immunity, he should receive notice and an opportunity for a hearing before the judge who issues the order. Basic fairness requires this much. “The history of liberty has largely been the history of procedural safeguards.” McNabb v. United States, 318 U.S. 332, 347, 63 S.Ct. 608, 616, 87 L.Ed. 819 (1943). The protections of the United States Constitution are not units of the federal budget, subject to reduction as the political winds change.
Accordingly, I dissent from the view of the Court that a citizen is not entitled to notice and an opportunity to be heard before he is required to speak in a criminal case.