Court Opinion

ID: 9673534
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 04:14:14.384001+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:16:22.552747
License: Public Domain

CLINTON, Judge,
concurring.
Since Article 20.15, V.A.C.C.P., does not come to our attention often, while we are explicating it in this cause I would hold that it is facially unconstitutional and then give it an interpretative gloss that makes it constitutional.
*453Much has been written on the subject of officially compelling one to give answers which are claimed to be incriminatory, and a good deal of the holdings are collected in Lefkowitz v. Turley, 414 U.S. 70, 94 S.Ct. 316, 38 L.Ed.2d 274 (1973).1 Kastigar v. United States, cited in the margin, is the seminal decision on the point, though the Supreme Court had earlier twice held that grand jury witnesses, each a police officer, have the right to stand on the constitutional privilege until immunity is given, Gardner v. Broderick, 392 U.S. 273, 88 S.Ct. 1913, 20 L.Ed.2d 1082 (1968); Stevens v. Marks, 383 U.S. 234, 86 S.Ct. 788, 15 L.Ed.2d 724 (1966), and may not be penalized for exercising the right, Garrity v. New Jersey, 385 U.S. 493, 87 S.Ct. 616, 17 L.Ed.2d 562 (1967). Same is true of a lawyer, Spevack v. Klein, 385 U.S. 511, 514,2 87 S.Ct. 625, 627, 17 L.Ed.2d 574 (1967).
In purporting to grant a discretionary power — “the court may compel the witness to answer the question” — that the court is to exercise by holding a privileged witness in contempt, imposing a fine and committing him to jail until willing to testify, Article 20.15, supra, plainly abridges his Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination incorporated into the Fourteenth Amendment against the State, as well as his right vouchsafed by Article I, § 10 of the Constitution of Texas.
However, the power is to be exercised only “if [the question] appears to be a proper one,” Article 20.15, supra. Yet, this language is quite susceptible of the altogether reasonable interpretation that the question is not “proper” unless “use” immunity has been extended to the answer given by the witness.3
With these additional observations, I join in the opinion of the Court.

. “The [Fifth] Amendment not only protects the individual against being involuntarily called as a witness against him in a criminal prosecution but also privileges him not to answer official questions put to him in any other proceedings, civil or criminal, formal or informal, where the answers might incriminate him in future criminal proceedings. * * * In any of these contexts, therefore, a witness protected by the privilege may rightfully refuse to answer unless and until he is protected at least against the use of his compelled answers and evidence derived therefrom in any subsequent criminal case in which he is a defendant. Kastigar v. United States, 406 U.S. 441 [92 S.Ct. 1653, 32 L.Ed.2d 212] (1972).”

. “We conclude ... that the Self-Incrimination Clause of the Fifth Amendment has been absorbed in the Fourteenth, that it extends its protection to lawyers as well as to other individuals, and that it should not be watered down by imposing the dishonor of disbarment and the deprivation of a livelihood as a price for asserting it.”
The Court further explained that in context “ ‘penalty’ is not restricted to fine or imprisonment. It means ... the imposition of any sanction which makes assertion of the Fifth Amendment privilege ‘costly’,” id., at 515, 87 S.Ct. at 628.

.Though a procedure for grant of immunity has not been expressly provided by the Legislature, as the Court demonstrated in Ex parte Muncy, 72 Tex.Cr.R. 541, 163 S.W. 29 (1914), “The right under our law of the district attorney, with the knowledge and consent of the district judge, to guarantee immunity from prosecution and punishment has never been seriously questioned in this state,” id., at 38. The then extant statutory authority for the grant, id., at 45 and 54, similar to provisions in predecessor codes cited in earlier decisions to the same effect, e. g., Barrara v. State, 42 Tex. 260, 263 (1875); Camron v. State, 32 Tex.Cr.R. 180, 22 S.W. 682 (1893); Ex parte Greenhaw, 41 Tex.Cr.R. 278, 53 S.W. 1024 (1899), have since been melded into Article 32.02, V.A.C. C.P. See Washburn v. State, 164 Tex.Cr.R. 448, 299 S.W.2d 706 (1956).