Court Opinion

ID: 9426072
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:16:43.897079+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:58.924910
License: Public Domain

*320Me. Justice Blackmun,
with whom Me. Justice Rehnquist joins, concurring.
In Brown v. United States, 359 U. S. 41 (1959), the petitioner had refused, on Fifth Amendment grounds, to answer questions put to him by a federal grand jury. He thereafter was immunized by the District Judge but, on returning to the grand jury room, persisted in his refusal to answer questions. He again was taken before the District Judge, who repeated the grand jury’s questions and ordered the petitioner to answer. He again refused. The court then, pursuant to Fed. Rule Crim. Proc. 42 (a), adjudged him guilty of criminal contempt. This Court, by a 5-4 vote, sustained the judgment, and expressly approved the use of summary proceedings; it did so on the ground that the refusal to answer before the District Judge was a contempt “committed in the actual presence of the court,” within the meaning of Rule 42 (a). 359 U. S., at 47-52.
Less than seven years later, in Harris v. United States, 382 U. S. 162 (1965), the Court, with two new Justices, was confronted with a factual situation identical in all relevant respects to that in Brown. In Harris, however, the Court, again by a 5-4 vote, concluded that the witness’ refusal to answer the questions before the District Judge was not a contempt “committed in the actual presence of the court.” It reasoned:
“The real contempt, if such there was, was contempt before the grand jury — the refusal to answer to it when directed by the court. Swearing the witness and repeating the questions before the judge was an effort to have the refusal to testify ‘committed in the actual presence of the court’ for the purposes of Rule 42 (a). It served no other purpose, for the witness had been adamant and had made his position known. The appearance before the District Court was not a new and different pro*321ceeding, unrelated to the other. It was ancillary to the grand jury hearing and designed as an aid to it.” 382 U. S., at 164-165.
The Court then expressly overruled Brown. Id., at 167.
1 was not on the Court when Brown and Harris were decided. Had I been, I would have joined the Court in Brown and the dissenters in Harris. Although I join the Court’s opinion today, I write separately to express my conviction that Harris, at the most, now stands for nothing more than the proposition that a witness’ refusal to answer grand jury questions is not conduct "in the actual presence of the court,” even when the questions are restated by the district judge and the witness persists in his refusal to answer.1
Summary contempt, especially summary criminal contempt, as the Court indicates, ante, at 319, is not a power lightly to be exercised.2 Nevertheless, summary criminal contempt is a necessary and legitimate part of a court’s arsenal of weapons to prevent obstruction, violent or otherwise, of its proceedings. It is not seriously disputed that a refusal to testify is punishable as a criminal contempt. So long as this Court holds, as it has, that the *322summary procedure of Rule 42 (a) satisfies the requirements of due process, the Rule should be read to mean precisely what it says.

 The Solicitor General has invited the Court' in this case to overrule Harris. Brief for United States 24. Since the refusal to testify, involved here, occurred during the course of a trial rather than before a grand jury, I agree with the Court’s tacit conclusion to save the question of overruling Harris for another day.

 Although the use of civil contempt, as opposed to the more drastic criminal contempt, is usually to be preferred as a remedy, I am aware of no requirement that the less drastic sanction must be employed in all cases. Indeed, despite the fact that respondents were already incarcerated for substantive criminal offenses, it appears to be clear that service of their sentences could have been interrupted to compel them to serve an intervening sentence for contempt. See, e. g., United States v. Liddy, 166 U. S. App. D. C. 289, 510 F. 2d 669 (1974), cert. denied, 420 U. S. 980 (1975); Anglin v. Johnston, 504 F. 2d 1165 (CA7 1974), cert. denied, 420 U. S. 962 (1975).