Court Opinion

ID: 9842820
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 02:19:08.856587+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:13:54.691909
License: Public Domain

*844CLARK, Chief Judge
(concurring in affirmance).
The opinions of my brothers herein well set forth the present state of the authorities and the difficulties facing an inferior court in trying to apply the somewhat conflicting principles of the various applicable decisions. I am constrained to believe that, while Judge MEDINA may be stating the law of the future, Judge GALSTON is stating the law of the present, which is binding upon us. Let me say at once that I am in sympathy with what seems.to be the developing law; I shall be relieved, rather than otherwise, if the Supreme Court goes to the logical conclusion toward which it appears to be headed, namely, that any honest claim of self-crimination, deliberately and positively made by a witness before a grand-jury — a potential accused — must be respected. I heartily agree thát the Fifth Amendment should be preserved, not diluted by doubtful interpretation — preserved more for the benefit of those of us who would demonstrate a true belief in democracy and the potent power of our democratic institutions than -of the immediate beneficiaries of its claim. And unless we go as far as I have indicated, we do not have' any satisfactory working principle to guide prosecutors and courts or to shield a potential accused.
But, trying to apply the law as it has been stated, I do think' it clear that to' grant the' claim here would -mark at least a step beyond any yet clearly taken. We' may note the contrast with our previous most extensive holding, United States v. Doto, 2 Cir., 205 F.2d 416. There outside circumstances, notably the Senate crime investigation of the Kefauver committee, had definitely marked the accused as a well-known and important criminal along the very lines which the prosecutor’s questions closely pursued. Here it is only upon a series of assumptions involving the existence of conspiracy and the close connection of the defendant therewith that we can make the forced deduction of self-crimination. Among these assumptions must .be. (a) that a single dubious question, even though excluded — here the use of the names Tanner or Fausto — makes a setting of danger which carries over to other questions themselves innocent; (b) that inquiries as to residing or carrying on of business in New York City or in particular places therein are taboo; (c) that also taboo are questions as to the witness’s capabilities, such as the ability to use a typewriter; and (d) that inquiry cannot be made as to persons named, but otherwise unidentified. Of course on the primary assumptions stated, answers to questions such as these may easily be part of a web leading to conviction. But under the heretofore rule, it was just such assumptions which could not be made without something definite in the case to show the. innocent appearing questions actually to be deadly. To turn the statement around, I suggest that if these questions without more are incriminating, then there is literally no question as to the witness’s activities, capabilities, or acquaintances which he need answer. If the law is going that far, I think for many reasons, including proper respect for it, that the step should be done directly in the manner suggested above. It should not be accomplished by a form of indirection which can only puzzle prosecutors and courts and lead them to waste their time and energy in refinements of distinction without substance, while some witnesses are jailed and others are freed under quite similar circumstances. So I think we must await the Supreme Court’s pilotage to go beyond the law as construed below..