Court Opinion

ID: 9422404
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:02:26.702717+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:36.484485
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Brennan,
concurring in the result.
I join in the judgment affirming the Court of Appeals, but not in my Brother Harlan’s opinion.
The Select Committee assured petitioner that it would respect his reliance upon his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination, but petitioner deliberately and explicitly chose not to exercise that privilege. In that circumstance, the case is not one for reconsideration of Hale v. Henkel, 201 U. S. 43, and United States v. Murdock, 284 U. S. 141. I adhere, however, to my view that in a proper case we should reconsider the holdings of Hale and Murdock that, in a federal proceeding, possible incrimination under state law presents no basis for invoking the Fifth Amendment privilege. See Knapp v. Schweitzer, 357 U. S. 371, 381 (concurring opinion); see also Cohen v. Hurley, 366 U. S. 117, 154 (dissenting opinion).
The petitioner’s constitutional claims find no support, in my view, in Kilbourn v. Thompson, 103 U. S. 168. *623That case involved a congressional inquiry into the settlement of a claim against a bankrupt firm. The settlement was said to threaten depletion of the bankrupt estate to the injury of other creditors, including the United States. The Court held that the subject matter was outside legislative cognizance because it was a matter inherently and historically for adjustment by the judicial branch, and because there was no hint of a legislative purpose to be served by the inquiry — “it could result in no valid legislation on the subject to which the inquiry referred.” 103 U. S., at 195.
The congressional inquiry before us here is in sharp contrast to that in Kilbourn. The Select Committee was seeking factual material to aid in the drafting and adopting of remedial legislation to curb misuse by union officials of union funds — unquestionably a proper legislative purpose. The pending Marion County indictment did not involve misuse of union funds but the alleged bribery of a state official in connection with a sale of land to the State. However, the congressional inquiry and the state prosecution crossed paths when the Committee learned that union funds might have been used in a corrupt attempt to forestall an earlier indictment in another county, Lake, for the same alleged bribery. It seems to me obvious that the Committee’s interrogation of the petitioner about the use of union funds to forestall that indictment did not stray beyond the range of the Committee’s valid legislative purpose. It may be that, under Indiana law, evidence of the attempt, although not essential, would be admissible at the trial under the Marion County indictment.1 But this hardly converts the Com*624mittee’s inquiry about the attempt into a legislative rehearsal of the trial of the Marion County indictment, bringing the inquiry within Kilbourn’s condemnation of legislative usurpation of judicial functions.
When a congressional inquiry and a criminal prosecution cross paths, Congress must accommodate the public interest in legitimate legislative inquiry with the public interest in securing the witness a fair trial. Whether a proper accommodation has been made must be determined from the vantage point of the time of petitioner’s appearance before the Committee.
Any thought that some of our recent decisions, e. g., Barenblatt v. United States, 360 U. S. 109; Wilkinson v. United States, 365 U. S. 399; Braden v. United States, 365 U. S. 431, weakened the vitality of our holding in Watkins v. United States, 354 U. S. 178, 187, that the congressional power of inquiry is not “an end in itself; it must be related to, and in furtherance of, a legitimate task of the Congress,” is dispelled by today’s strong expression of continued adherence to that vital principle. Investigation conducted solely to aggrandize the investigator or punish the investigated, either by publicity or by prosecution, is indefensible — it exceeds the congressional power: exposure for the sake of exposure is not legislative inquiry.
“[T]he power to investigate must not be confused with any of the powers of law enforcement . . . .” Quinn v. United States, 349 U. S. 155, 161; see United States v. Icardi, 140 F. Supp. 383. On the other hand, so long as the subject matter is not in “an area in which Congress is forbidden to legislate,” Quinn, supra, at 161, the mere fact that the conduct under inquiry may have some relevance to the subject matter of a pending state indictment cannot absolutely foreclose congressional inquiry. Surely it cannot be said that a fair criminal trial and a full power of inquiry are interests that defy accommodation. The *625courts, responsible for protecting both these vital interests, will give the closest scrutiny to assure that indeed a legislative purpose was being pursued and that the inquiry was not aimed at aiding the criminal prosecution. Even within the realm of relevant inquiry, there may be situations in which fundamental fairness would demand postponement of inquiry until after an immediately pending trial, or the taking of testimony in executive session— or that the State grant a continuance in the trial. On what is before us now, I think that the facts fail to show that this inquiry was unable to proceed without working a serious likelihood of unfairness. Examining the challenged questioning in the full context of the congressional inquiry and its relevance to legislation in process, leads me to conclude that petitioner was not questioned for exposure’s sake.
The Select Committee began its hearings in 1957. The Committee engaged from the start in gathering facts which led to the conclusion that legislation requiring labor organizations to report and disclose various matters about their operation was necessary. The Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act of 1959, 73 Stat. 519, resulted. Many features of that statute stem from facts learned by the Select Committee’s examination into the affairs of several labor organizations, though the drafting was the work of the Senate Subcommittee on Labor and the House Subcommittee on Labor-Management Relations.2 The Subcommittees and their parent Standing Committees framed the statute after considering the Select Committee’s findings. See, e. g., S. Rep. No. 1684, 85th Cong., 2d Sess. 1 (1958); S. Rep. No. 187, 86th Cong., 1st Sess. 2 (1959); H. R. Rep. No. 741, 86th Cong., 1st *626Sess. 1 (1959); see also S. Doc. No. 10, 86th Cong., 1st Sess. 1 (1959). The bills reported out by those Committees recited that their purpose was “[t]o provide for the reporting and disclosure of certain financial transactions and administrative practices of labor organizations and employers, to prevent abuses in the administration of trusteeships by labor organizations, to provide standards with respect to the election of officers of labor organizations . . . .” The second paragraph of the Preamble to the bills included the following: “The Congress further finds, from recent investigations in the labor and management fields, that there have been a number of instances of breach of trust, corruption, disregard of the rights of individual employees, and other failures to observe high standards of responsibility and ethical conduct which require further and supplementary legislation . . . .” S. 1555 and H. R. 8342, 86th Cong., 1st Sess. (1959); see also S. 3974, 85th Cong., 2d Sess. (1958).
At the opening of the Select Committee’s hearings on February 26, 1957, the Chairman, Senator McClellan, noted petitioner’s union as one of those that the Committee intended to investigate. Hearings, 2. Although the Committee’s hearings during the 16 months before they reached petitioner were very full, they had touched upon the affairs of only a few unions, and petitioner’s was only the fourth union inquired into with a particular view toward discovering modes of misusing union funds. See Hearings, at 2581, 3221, 7512, and 11786. Petitioner was subpoenaed on May 20, 1958, to appear before the Committee on June 2; his own appearance was put off to June 27, although testimony of other witnesses was taken commencing on June 4. Three months before he was subpoenaed, the state indictment against him was handed up, on February 18,1958. He was not tried until November 1960, about 29 months after his appearance before the Committee. At the time he appeared, the question*627ing was directly relevant to ,the Committee’s efforts to inform itself and Congress and to secure legislation within congressional power to enact, aimed at correcting just such evils as those about which petitioner was questioned. Earlier in June 1958, a labor-management reporting and disclosure bill, the Kennedy-Ives Bill, was reported out by the Senate Committee on Labor and Public Welfare and passed by the Senate, but in August it failed of passage in the House. 104 Cong. Rec. 10657, 11486-11487, 18287-18288. Therefore a bill was reintroduced on January 20, 1959, now known as the Kennedy-Ervin Bill. In introducing it, Senator Kennedy read a letter from ex-Senator Ives which said: “[The bill] is designed to meet the objectives set forth in the report of the Senate Select Committee on Improper Activities in the Labor or Management Field.” 2 N. L. R. B., Legislative History of the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act of 1959, p. 968. The Senate Subcommittee on Labor then conducted intensive hearings on that and alternative bills.3 In opening those hearings, Senator Kennedy said “We expect further recommendations from the McClellan committee in its second annual report, and we expect to have the advice of an expert panel on labor law revision which will form the basis of further hearings and another bill later this year.” 4 Reliance on the work of the Select Committee was evident and significant in those hearings. Hearings before the House Subcommittee began after the conclusion of the hearings by the Senate Subcommittee, and continued into June.5 Spirited debate over the *628merits of the proposed legislation continued throughout that session of Congress until enactment as the Act of September 14, 1959, Pub. L. 86-257. Section 2 (b) of the declaration of findings, purposes, and policy incorporates the above-quoted findings of the second paragraph of the Kennedy-Ervin Bill. It was not until 14 months after passage that petitioner was tried.
The questioning of petitioner comes into focus against this background of an inquiry begun by the Select Committee more than a year before petitioner’s indictment and continued by both the Select Committee and the Senate and House Labor Subcommittees well after petitioner’s appearance, all aimed at and culminating in legislation. In this light, petitioner’s interrogation emerges as but one step in the process of fact-gathering to establish the necessity for and the nature of remedial legislation, and I cannot say that it was an unnecessary step, or that the record supports a conclusion that the Select Committee questioned petitioner to affect his state trial.

 We are informed that the petitioner was convicted under the indictment at a trial held some 29 months after his appearance before the Committee, but we are not informed whether the Committee proceedings were part of the State’s proofs or otherwise affected the trial. Clearly, however, any contention as to unfairness in his state trial must abide review of that conviction.

 The Select Committee’s membership throughout included two members of the Senate Subcommittee on Labor, Senators Kennedy and Goldwater, who participated actively in the work of both Committees.

 Hearings before the Subcommittee on Labor of the Senate Committee on Labor and Public Welfare, on Labor-Management Reform Legislation, 86th Cong., 1st Sess. (January through March 1959).

 Id., at 40-41.

 Hearings before a Joint Subcommittee of the House Committee on Education and Labor, on Labor-Management Reform Legislation, 86th Cong., 1st Sess. (March through June 1959).