Court Opinion

ID: 9427493
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:20:57.673487+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:07.513766
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Blackmun,
with whom The Chief Justice joins, dissenting.
The Court in this case reaches out to decide an important constitutional question even though that question is presented in the context of an abstract dispute over a hypothetical ruling of the trial court. For me, the facts present too remote and speculative an injury to federally protected rights to support the exercise of jurisdiction by this Court. Indeed, *464examination of the record reveals for me that the Court decides today a question different from the one the trial court considered. This demonstrates how far afield we range when we cut loose from the requirement that only concrete disputes may be decided by this Court. Because I believe the Court is without authority to engage in this type of abstract adjudication of constitutional rights in a factual vacuum, I dissent.
Prior to trial, and again at the close of the State's evidence, respondent Portash attempted to obtain an advance eviden-tiary ruling from the trial court. Though the precise nature of the ruling respondent sought is a matter of dispute, it related generally to whether and to what extent the State would be permitted to use, during cross-examination of respondent and in the rebuttal phase of its own case, information supplied by respondent under the statutory grant of immunity. When respondent failed to obtain a ruling he considered satisfactory, he refrained from testifying in his own behalf. Accordingly, he did not take the stand at the trial. He was not cross-examined. He gave no answer determined by the trial court to be materially inconsistent with any prior immunized statement on a relevant issue. The State did not seek to impeach him through use of immunized testimony. And the trial court did not rule that the State could do so in response to an inconsistent answer, or that the State could otherwise make use of immunized testimony at trial. In short, because of his failure to take the stand, respondent was never incriminated through the use of the testimony he previously had supplied under the immunity grant.
Even so, the Court takes jurisdiction over this dispute and decides the merits of respondent's claim that it would have constituted a violation of his right under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to be free from compelled self-incrimination had the State used immunized testimony to impeach him, assuming, of course, that he would have taken the stand, *465that he would have given materially inconsistent answers to relevant questions, and that the State would have chosen to impeach him with prior immunized testimony. Thé Court justifies this assertion of jurisdiction, over the State’s objection that the dispute is only hypothetical, by announcing that the New Jersey courts decided the issue and held it to be properly presented on appeal. Citing cases such as Raley v. Ohio, 360 U. S. 423 (1959), and Jenkins v. Georgia, 418 U. S. 153 (1974), ante, at 455, the Court holds that New Jersey’s determination that the federal issue properly has been presented is sufficient to allow this Court to decide the issue, notwithstanding respondent’s failure to take the stand. "[T]here is nothing in federal law to prohibit New Jersey from following such a procedure,” the Court holds, “or, so-long as the ‘case or controversy’ requirement of Art. Ill is met, to foreclose our consideration of the substantive constitutional issue now that the New Jersey courts have decided it.” Ibid.
But the State’s objection, as I understand it, goes not to whether the federal issue properly was presented in the state courts, but to whether, in light of respondent’s failure to testify, the alleged claim is too remote and speculative to support jurisdiction here. As such, resolution of the State’s objection turns not on the determination that the New Jersey courts recognized the federal issue as properly presented, but on the determination that there is indeed a federal issue in the case. And this latter determination depends upon whether, as a matter of federal law, there is a sufficiently concrete controversy over the scope of a federal right to support the exercise of jurisdiction by this Court.
The Court tacitly recognizes this, I take it, by conceding, ante, at 455-456, that the “case or controversy” requirement of Art. Ill must be met and by its citation of Brooks v. Tennessee, 406 U. S. 605 (1972). For in Brooks, the dissenters argued that since the defendant had not taken the stand, his right *466to be free from compelled self-incrimination had not been infringed, and therefore the defendant had not presented the Court with any federal issue “bearing on the privilege against self-incrimination.” Id., at 617. The Court answered that argument by saying that the Tennessee statute in issue imposed a burden on the right to remain silent by penalizing a defendant who asserted that right at the start of his case, and “that penalty constitute [d] the infringement of the right.” Id., at 611 n. 6. Thus, in Brooks, the Court found that there was a federal issue presented even though the defendant had not taken the stand, since it was the exercise of the right not to testify that the State burdened.
As in Brooks, the Court here must believe that there was some infringement of a federal right sufficient to establish a concrete controversy capable of supporting its jurisdiction. But, unlike in Brooks, the Court takes care to omit any mention of what federal right was infringed by the hypothetical “ruling” of the trial court. It simply says that New Jersey recognized the issue as having been presented, intimates that the case is within Art. Ill’s case-or-controversy requirement, and proceeds to the merits.
What federal right it is that the “ruling” of the trial court infringed is not easy to ascertain. It would not appear that the right to remain silent, at issue in Brooks, was burdened, since respondent asserted that right without suffering any penalty for doing so. Nor did the hypothetical ruling compel respondent to incriminate himself, since it did not force him to take the stand and subject himself to impeachment by use of the immunized testimony. Respondent argues that it was his right to testify in his own behalf that the trial court infringed by threatening him with the possibility that, if he were to testify and if he were to give materially inconsistent answers to relevant questions, the court would permit the State to impeach respondent with his immunized testimony, if the State could do so. This threat, respondent now argues, deterred him from taking the stand in his own behalf, and *467thereby constituted an unconstitutional infringement of his right to testify. Brief for Respondent 13.
This appears to be the theory that the Appellate Division proceeded upon, see 151 N. J. Super. 200, 204, 209, 376 A. 2d 950, 952, 955, and it appears to be the most plausible reasoning upon which one could conclude that this case involves an actual, and not hypothetical, invasion of federal rights. As such, the Court today sub silentio decides as a matter of federal law that the hypothetical ruling by a state court that it would permit impeachment with immunized testimony in certain circumstances not yet come to pass creates a sufficient infringement on the right to testify as to create a controversy capable of being adjudicated here.
But this claimed burden on the right to testify is too speculative to support the exercise of jurisdiction by this Court over the ultimate dispute concerning the use of immunized testimony. On this record, we cannot tell whether respondent would have taken the stand even had he obtained the ruling he sought from the trial court. The decision by a criminal defendant to testify is often the most important decision he faces in the trial, and it seldom turns on the resolution of one factor among many. Even had respondent taken the stand, there is no assurance he would have given inconsistent answers to questions. Indeed, respondent vigorously has argued, in this Court and in the state courts, that he would not have testified in any manner inconsistently with his immunized testimony. Moreover, even had inconsistent answers been given, the trial court would have had to determine whether the answers were offered in response to relevant and material questions before it would have permitted impeachment. And even then, there is no certainty that the State actually would have sought to use immunized materials to impeach respondent.
In these circumstances, I would hold the dispute as to the use of the immunized testimony to be too remote and speculative to enable this Court to adjudicate it. Cf. Laird *468v. Tatum, 408 U. S. 1 (1972). By finding sufficient controversy to exist in this case to reach the federal issue, the Court exercises jurisdiction over an abstract dispute of no concrete significance, and as a result renders an advisory opinion, informing respondent what the State would have been permitted to do or not do had respondent ever taken the stand.
I find this adjudication of an abstract dispute not only to be beyond the jurisdiction of the Court but to be unwise as well. At a minimum, as our Brother Powell notes, ante, at 462, a requirement that such a claim be adjudicated on appeal only when presented by a defendant who has taken the stand prevents a defendant from manufacturing constitutional challenges when he has no intention of taking the stand and testifying in his own behalf. More fundamentally, such disembodied decisionmaking removes disputes from the factual and often legal context that sharpens issues, highlights problem areas of special concern, and, above all, gives a reviewing court some notion of the practical reach of its pronouncements.
Indeed, my examination of the record in this case makes me suspect that in adjudicating an abstract and academic legal question the Court has affirmed the reversal of respondent's conviction on the basis of an issue not even argued by respondent at the trial level in his attempt to obtain an advance ruling from the trial court. It is clear to me that the possible use of immunized testimony to impeach respondent was not at all respondent's concern before the trial court. At the pretrial hearing respondent's counsel conceded that if respondent gave materially inconsistent answers, he could be impeached with the grand jury testimony or prosecuted for perjury. App. 144a. Rather, respondent was attempting to obtain an advance ruling from the trial court that the State could not rely on information gathered from respondent’s immunized testimony in formulating questions for respondent on cross-examination. His argument to the trial court was that unless the State could show that it discovered the infor*469mation that formed the basis of its questions from a source independent of his immunized testimony, the Fifth Amendment prohibited the State from asking those questions. And it was in reliance on the trial court’s ruling that it would not decide in advance on this request — but would wait until each question was asked to consider this objection — that respondent refused to take the stand.
The record at almost every point supports this interpretation of what it was that respondent sought from the trial court. For example, in the course of conceding that respondent properly would be subject to impeachment with the grand jury testimony if he gave answers at trial materially inconsistent with that testimony, respondent’s counsel stated that he “merely want[ed] a ruling from the Court that, unless the door is opened, that they are not permitted to use any of [the immunized testimony] by way of cross examination, by way of rebuttal, or by way of cross examination of any of our witnesses, with the one limitation, that I think is inherent, is that except in the event of perjury” (emphasis added). App. 146a. See id., at 143a-148a.
Similarly, when counsel renewed this argument at the close of the State’s evidence, the record reveals that his concern was not with impeachment, but with the use of the immunized testimony as a basis for asking questions. Thus, counsel argued that what the immunity statute proscribed was “use [of] the fruits of his testimony to cross examine him in his testimony.” Id., at 203a.1
*470Concededly, in the passage the Court quotes, ante, at 454-455, the trial court stated that if respondent gave materially inconsistent answers, it would permit impeachment with the immunized testimony. But an examination of the entire discussion from which that quotation is lifted makes it clear that respondent was not seeking a ruling as to impeachment for inconsistent statements, but a limitation on the scope of cross-examination. Thus, just before the quoted exchange, respondent’s counsel assured the trial court that “the direct examination will in no way be inconsistent with his grand jury [immunized] testimony,” App. 220a, but that the problem concerned the use of “consistent grand jury testimony which is incriminating to convict the man on the stand.” Ibid. And immediately after the passage upon which the Court relies, respondent waved off the impeachment issue and stated that the problem that concerned him was the use by the State of information obtained from the immunized testimony to force respondent to give answers on the stand that would incriminate him.2
The trial court refused to rule in advance on this attempt to limit cross-examination, and it was this refusal that respondent claimed prompted his refusal to testify. Id., at 243a. Before the Appellate Division, however, the dispute was transmuted into one over the ability of the State to impeach respondent with the immunized testimony. It was on that issue that the conviction was reversed. And it is on *471that issue that this Court affirms that reversal. Thus, because the Court reaches out to decide a theoretical legal question presented in an abstract setting, it permits respondent to obtain a favorable ruling from this Court on an issue of federal law that he did not assert in the trial court, and that did not form the basis for his refusing to testify in that court. And I assume respondent will be free at a new trial to renew his original argument, that the State is forbidden to use what it learned from the immunized testimony in formulating questions on cross-examination. This illustrates, I think, the problems the Court will encounter in every case in which it abandons the requirement that such an issue be presented for resolution only in the context of a concrete dispute about its actual operation at trial.
If this case presented simply the question whether state law had viewed the federal issue as properly presented, I could understand better the Court’s desire to reach the federal issue. But though a State may decide whether a federal issue actually present in the case properly was brought to the attention of its own courts for adjudication, e. g., Raley v. Ohio, 360 U. S. 423 (1959), it never should transform an abstract dispute about a federal constitutional right into a case or controversy capable of being adjudicated in this Court simply by deciding that federal issue. Doremus v. Board of Education, 342 U. S. 429, 434-435 (1952). Otherwise, a State, by ruling on a purely hypothetical legal question in the context of reviewing a criminal conviction, could confer Art. Ill jurisdiction on this Court where the facts do not support the existence of a case or controversy.
I would require that respondent take the stand and actually assert the rights he seeks to vindicate in the context of an actual attempt by the State to use "the immunized testimony. Because the Court does not require this, I dissent.

 “Mr. Wilbert [defense counsel]: Your Honor, what they are going to do is attempt to enlarge the cross examination to question him about aspects of that grand jury testimony when he is not inconsistent at all on direct examination with it. They’re going to make him inconsistent or make him incriminate himself by the use of the grand jury testimony. . . . If we stay out of the area totally and then on cross examination they ask him to give an answer that’s consistent with his grand jury testimony but which incriminates him, how can that possibly be permitted, your Honor? . . . [W]hat they’re doing there is utilizing that grand jury *470testimony not to show an inconsistency but to create consistent incrimination . . . .” App. 203a-204a (emphasis added).
See id., at 168a, 173a, 192a-193a, 202a-203a.

 “Mr. Wilbert: .... If they’re allowed to open the grand jury testimony of Mr. Port-ash by asking him the questions that they only gained knowledge of in his grand jury testimony and when he didn’t testify about it on direct, I submit it is an absolute erroneous use under the law, erroneous use of that grand jury testimony and that’s what I’m — that’s why I’m here seeking clarification, that’s what it’s all about.” Id., at 228a.
See id., at 225a, 228a, 230a-231a.