Court Opinion

ID: 9425610
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:15:14.588894+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:56.578667
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Douglas,
with whom Mr. Justice Brennan concurs, dissenting.
Mr. Justice Harlan speaking for the Court in Simmons v. United States, 390 U. S. 377, 394, said: “[W]e find it intolerable that one constitutional right should have to *244be surrendered in order to assert another.” In that case an accused testified on a motion to suppress evidence in order to protect his Fourth Amendment rights but later discovered that the testimony would be used by the prosecution against him. We held that the testimony the defendant gave on a motion to suppress evidence on Fourth Amendment grounds was not admissible against him at trial on the issue of guilt “unless he makes no objection.” Ibid.
If an accused in order to protect his Fourth Amendment right gives testimony that is protected by the Self-Incrimination Clause of the Fifth Amendment, I fail to see how testimony protective of Sixth Amendment rights is on a lower level. In United States v, Jackson, 390 U. S. 570, we held unenforceable provisions of a federal act which made the death penalty applicable only to those who contested their guilt before a jury. The “inevitable effect” in that case was “to discourage assertion of the Fifth Amendment right not to plead guilty and to deter exercise of the Sixth Amendment right to demand a jury trial.” Id., at 581.
The suggestion that no Sixth Amendment right existed in this case does not find support in the record. There is .no finding as to the amount of the funds restricted and beyond the reach of the respondent, or as to what free funds he actually had or as to what were his obligations. Yet all of these facts would be necessary before we could reach that conclusion. This Court in. passing on applications to proceed in forma pauperis looks not only to what the applicant’s income and/or cash position is but what his periodic liabilities are. Thus a person with an income of $600 a month has been allowed to proceed in forma pauperis where his present obligations consume his entire income. The mere fact that one has money in the bank is therefore not enough *245to make frivolous his claim of indigency for purposes of in. forma pauperis. We may not therefore responsibly say there was no genuine Sixth Amendment right to counsel in this case.
Moreover, whether one has a bona fide claim to appointed counsel is a legal point which laymen should not have to determine before they may speak without fear. The funds here involved were in Totten trusts and Kahan thought that he had no access to them under the law. One should not have to seek advice on points of law nor have an audit conducted on his personal finances before he feels free to assert his Sixth Amendment rights. Statements made in good faith may later turn out to be false and all those who utter the statements run the risk that they may not be able to convince others of their sincerity. If “tension” between the Sixth and Fifth Amendments arises only when judges, with the benefit of hindsight and legal acumen not possessed by the defendant, later determine the Sixth Amendment claim to be “bona fide,” many indigents with legitimate claims to appointed counsel will hesitate to speak freely in asserting the claim. As the court below phrased it, the defendant will be “forced to gamble his right to remain silent against his need for counsel or his understanding of the requirements for appointment of counsel.” 479 F. 2d 290, 292.
The principle of Simmons and Jackson is applicable, if reason is to prevail, where rights under the Fifth Amendment are entangled with rights under either the Fourth or the Sixth Amendment. There is such entanglement here, for the Fifth Amendment is as applicable to evidence concerning crimes with which the accused has not yet been charged as it is to evidence concerning crimes already charged. That was so held *246by a unanimous Court in Counselman v. Hitchcock, 142 U. S. 547, 562:
“It is broadly contended on the part of the ap-pellee that a witness is not entitled to plead the privilege of silence, except in a criminal case against himself; but such is not the language of the Constitution. Its provision is that no person shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself. This provision must have a broad construction in favor of the right which it was intended to secure. The matter under investigation by the grand jury in this case was a criminal matter, to inquire whether there had been a criminal violation of the Interstate Commerce Act. If Counselman had been guilty of the matters inquired of in the questions which he refused to answer, he himself was liable to criminal prosecution under the act. The case before the grand jury was, therefore, a criminal case. The reason given by Counselman for his refusal to answer the questions was that his answers might tend to criminate him, and showed that his apprehension was that, if he answered the questions truly and fully (as he was bound to do if he should answer them at all), the answers might show that he had committed a crime against the Interstate Commerce Act, for which he might be prosecuted. His answers, therefore, would be testimony against himself, and he would be compelled to give them in a criminal case.”
The Court of Appeals was correct in its application of this issue and I would affirm.