Court Opinion

ID: 9773641
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 17:52:34.886367+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:31:55.692312
License: Public Domain

CLINTON, Judge,
concurring.
The thought advanced in dissent has been scrutinized several times by the Supreme Court of the United States over the past decade. Initially approved by a divided court in Brown v. United States, 359 U.S. 41, 79 S.Ct. 539, 3 L.Ed.2d 609 (1969), the notion was rejected, again by a majority, in Harris v. United States, 382 U.S. 162, 86 S.Ct. 352, 15 L.Ed.2d 240 (1965) and Brown v. United States was expressly overruled. Harris v. United States, id. 382 U.S. at 164-165,1 86 S.Ct. at 354-355. More recent*934ly, the analysis in Harris, set out in the margin below, was approved again by the Supreme Court in United States v. Wilson, 421 U.S. 309, 95 S.Ct. 1802, 44 L.Ed.2d 186 (1975)2
Moreover, to uphold punishment under Article 1911a, V.A.C.S., is to say that somehow the court had general “authority” to order each applicant to answer questions. It did not. The authority of a court to compel a grand jury witness to answer a “proper” question is derived solely from Article 20.15, V.A.C.C.P.
Punishment could have been imposed under Article 20.15. There is no need for legislation.
TEAGUE, J., joins.

. “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 ques*934tions before the judge was an effort to have the refusal to testity ‘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 proceeding, unrelated to the other. It was ancillary to the grand jury hearing and designed as an aid to it.”

. Two concurring Justices, while not happy with all of Harris, do acknowledge that it stands for 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,” id. 421 U.S. at 321, 95 S.Ct. at 1809 (Blackmun, J., with whom Justice Rehnquist joins, concurring).