Court Opinion

ID: 9677978
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 06:07:44.996789+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:17:00.869460
License: Public Domain

WITTIG, Justice,
concurring.
Our United States Constitution, the Fifth Amendment, plainly provides that no person “shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself.” This privilege extends to official questions beyond strictly criminal cases and applies to official questions in other proceedings, “civil or criminal, formal or informal, where the answers might incriminate him in future criminal proceedings.”1 Indeed, a defendant does not lose this privilege *562solely by reason of a criminal conviction.2 As the majority notes, generally the privilege must be claimed. Our relator does not present a situation in which he exercised his constitutional right against self-incrimination. Nor is there a showing that the complained of order, “attempt[s] to attach an.impermissible penalty to the exercise of the privilege against self incrimination.”3 Our decision and its underpinnings should clearly dispel any notion that the state can constitutionally carry out any threat to “revoke probation for the legitimate exercise of the Fifth Amendment privilege.” 4
The courts and probation officers can compel attendance, questioning, and truthful responses, as the majority stated. The probationer has a duty to answer the polygraph examiner, “unless he invokes the privilege, [and] shows a realistic threat of self-incrimination.”5 So that we are clear, the Government’s right to interrogate ends abruptly and precisely where the individual’s privilege against self incrimination begins. The Government may impose no penalty for the exercise of this constitutional right.6 Accordingly my concurrence.

. See Minnesota v. Murphy, 465 U.S. 420, 426, 104 S.Ct. 1136, 79 L.Ed.2d 409 (1984).

. Id.

. Id. at 437, 104 S.Ct. 1136.

. Id.

. See People v. Miller, 208 Cal.App.3d 1311, 256 Cal.Rptr. 587, 589 (1989).

. See generally Minnesota, supra.