Court Opinion

ID: 9422263
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:01:54.984427+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:35.535795
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Harlan,
whom Mr. Justice Frankfurter joins, dissenting.
There is, of course, no doubt that a showing of “perti-nency” is an essential part of the Government’s burden in a prosecution under 2 U. S. C. § 192. But the nature of this burden may differ, dependent upon what transpired at the Congressional inquiry giving rise to the prosecution.
In a case where the prosecution involves the defendant’s refusal to answer a question whose pertinency was explained to him by the Congressional Committee before which he appeared as a witness — following his appropriate objection that the question was not pertinent to the matter “under inquiry,” see Barenblatt v. United States, 360 U. S. 109, 123-124—the Government must stand or fall upon that explanation. For it would be obviously unfair to allow the Government at trial to prove perti-*473nency on a different theory than was given to the defendant at the time he testified, and on the basis of which he presumably determined that he need not answer the question put.
Where, however, the defendant made no “pertinency” objection as a witness before the Congressional Committee, the Government at trial is left free to satisfy the requirement of pertinency in any way it may choose. The present case is such a one, for, as the Court’s opinion recognizes, the petitioner here made no adequate perti-nency objection before the House Un-American Activities Subcommittee.
I dissent because in my opinion the Court’s holding that the Government failed to establish “pertinency” rests on a too niggardly view of both the issue and the record. Pertinency, which in the context of an investigatory proceeding is of course a term of wider import than “relevancy” in the context of a trial, is to be judged not in terms of the immediate probative significance of a particular question to the matter under authorized inquiry, but in light of its tendency to elicit information which might be a useful link in the investigatory chain. See Carroll v. United States, 16 F. 2d 951, 953. An investigation must proceed “step by step.” Ibid.
Pertinency is found lacking here because (1) inquiry as to affairs relating to petitioner’s student days at Cornell University, situated at Ithaca, N. Y., it is said, was not germane to the Subcommittee’s investigation as to Communist activities in “the Albany area”; and (2) in any event, such investigation, the Court finds, related only to alleged Communist infiltration into labor unions and not as well to infiltration “at Cornell or in educational institutions generally.” I can agree with neither facet of this holding.
It is quite true, as the Court says, that Ithaca is some 165 miles away from Albany, but it seems to me much *474too refined to say, as a matter of law, that the trial court could not reasonably determine that Ithaca was within the Subcommittee’s terms of reference. Indeed, I think it fair to suggest that in common usage, at least among New Yorkers, “Albany area” would be regarded as aptly descriptive of “upstate” New York. In relation to “pert-inency” the matter should not be judged as if it were one of technical jurisdiction or venue.
The other aspect of the Court’s holding seems to me equally infirm. Accepting, as I shall, the Court’s view that the trial record shows that the Subcommittee, at the relevant time, was investigating only alleged Communist “labor union,” and not “educational,” infiltration, it seems to me abundantly clear that the lower courts were justified in concluding that all of the questions with respect to which the petitioner was convicted * were pertinent to that matter.
Only shortly before it examined petitioner, the Subcommittee had interrogated two witnesses, Marqusee and Richardson, with respect to their Communist affiliations, their summer work with two labor unions in Schenectady and in Syracuse, and Communist infiltration into such unions, all while they were both students at Cornell. One of these witnesses, Richardson, had testified that during this period he had known the petitioner, and one Homer Owen (Count Four of the indictment), as Communists on the Cornell campus. I do not see why it should now be deemed either that the Subcommittee’s interest in petitioner’s testimony was confined to “educational infiltration,” or that its preliminary questioning of him might not have led to developing information bearing on “labor union infiltration,” possibly stemming from student Communist activity on the Cornell campus, had *475further inquiry not been blocked by petitioner’s refusal to answer.
I cannot agree that the decision of this case has been made “within the conventional framework of the federal criminal law.” For surely in judging the pertinency of a question put in the course of an otherwise valid Congressional inquiry, as this one is recognized to have been, we should not insist that the inquiring committee follow stricter rules than the courts themselves apply in determining, for example, the sufficiency of a plea of self-incrimination under the “link in the chain” rule, see, e. g., Blau v. United States, 340 U. S. 159, or in judging “materiality” in a perjury case, see, e. g., Carroll v. United States, supra. In reversing this conviction, I think the Court has strayed from the even course of decision.
I would affirm.

 Counts One, Two, Four, and Five of the indictment, set forth in note 5 of the Court’s opinion. Ante, p. 461.