Court Opinion

ID: 9697942
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 19:37:44.846538+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:20:37.084993
License: Public Domain

*179Duncan, J.,
dissenting: The test to determine the validity of an immunity statute designed to prevent recourse to the privilege against self-incrimination is not doubtful. The immunity granted must be coextensive with the privilege to be taken away. Art. 15th of the Bill of Rights provides: "No subject shall ... be compelled to accuse or furnish evidence against himself.” This language does not confine the privilege to the withholding of evidence which may be used in prosecution by this state alone. It extends to any evidence which may be used to incriminate, regardless of where, how, or by what authority it may be used. It follows that in order to be valid the statute under consideration (Laws 1955, c. 312) must afford immunity which is equally broad.
In State v. Nowell, 58 N. H. 314, testimony was sought to be compelled with respect to the sale of intoxicating liquors by the witness or his employer. There was no reason to anticipate incrimination under the laws of any other jurisdiction, and the possibility received no express consideration in the opinion. Reliance upon the privilege guaranteed by "Article 15th was held to be precluded by reason of an immunity statute considered to afford the witness “legal protection . . . equivalent to his legal innocence.” Pp. 315, 316. In reaching.this conclusion the court laid down the test that the statute “must relieve him from all liability on account of the matters which he is compelled to disclose; otherwise, the statute would be ineffectual.” Ib., 315.
In Counselman v. Hitchcock, 142 U. S. 547, 586, a federal immunity statute was held invalid, because it failed to meet the standard there laid down: “In view of the constitutional provision, a statutory enactment, to be valid, must afford absolute immunity against future prosecution for the offence to which the question relates . . . the exonerating statute must be so broad as to give the witness complete amnesty. ...”
In Brown v. Walker, 161 U. S. 591, a similar test was applied, and a later federal statute held valid because “applicable whenever and in whatever court such prosecution may be had.” P. 608. After quoting from State v. Nowell, supra, and other cases, the court observed that the “cases will all be found to be based upon the idea that, if the testimony sought cannot possibly be used as a basis for, or in aid of, a criminal prosecution against the witness, the rule [that a witness is privileged not to answer] ceases to apply. ...” P. 597.
The federal statute before the court in the recent case of Ullmann *180v. United States, 350 U. S. 422, was held to prohibit prosecution by any state by reason of matters disclosed by the witness’ testimony and was accordingly upheld, as one which afforded him complete immunity. See also, Adams v. Maryland, 347 U. S. 179.
The situation disclosed by the present case can hardly be said to meet the requirements laid down by these cases. Admittedly the statute of this state will and can furnish this witness with no immunity against use of his testimony by the federal government or by any other state. Nor does it, like the more realistic Illinois statute, require denial of immunity where the testimony would subject the witness to prosecution elsewhere. People v. Burkert, 7 Ill. (2d) 506, 513, 514. The witness has pleaded his constitutional privilege not to answer, among other questions, the question of whether he is a member of the Communist party. The report of the Attorney General to the 1955 Legislature discloses that the witness, until recently a resident of Massachusetts, now resides close by that jurisdiction, and that his activities have been under investigation by agencies both of that Commonwealth and of the United States. Attorney General’s Report on Subversive Activities in New Hampshire, (1955) 204-206.
Under these circumstances, a holding that since the witness is protected by the statute against use of his testimony in the courts of this state, it follows that he is therefore not “compelled to accuse or furnish evidence against himself” in violation of the Constitution, and that his testimony therefore “cannot possibly be used as a basis for, or in aid of, a criminal prosecution” against him (Brown v. Walker, supra), is as the Supreme Court of Michigan pointed out in People v. DenUyl, 318 Mich. 645, 651, a “travesty on verity.” See also, Commonwealth v. Rhine, (Ky. App.) 303 S. W. (2d) 301; United States v. DiCarlo, 102 F. Supp. 597; Marcello v. United States, 196 F. (2d) 437, 444; State v. Kelly, (Fla.) 71 So. (2d) 887; Hart, J., dissenting, State v. Morgan, 164 Ohio St. 529, 556; Rogge, Compelling the Testimony of Political Deviants, 55 Mich. L. Rev. 163, 197, 200; note 66 Harv. L. Rev. 186.
The conclusion is irresistible that, far from being secured against all liability to future prosecution, this witness is on the contrary under grave risk of such prosecution at the hands of the United States or of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. To my mind application of the so-called “majority rule” in the circumstances of this case approaches subterfuge, by recognizing fiction as reality. *181People v. DenUyl, supra. It seems to me to expose the witness to the very danger which our Constitution guarantees that he shall not be required to face. I therefore dissent.
If this were not sufficient reason for differing from the view of the court in this case, I should be compelled to dissent on the further ground that the statute violates the provisions of the Constitution requiring separation of the powers of the several branches of the government. Const., Pt. I, Art. 37th. Unlike the statute considered in Ullmann v. United States, 350 U. S. 422, supra, our statute (Laws 1955, c. 312) clearly places the duty of adjudging whether a grant of immunity is “necessary ... in the public interest” squarely upon the judiciary, rather than upon the executive branch, in the person of the Attorney General, where it belongs. Instead of contemplating that the court should have no “discretion to deny the order on the ground that public interest does not warrant it” (Ullmann v. United States, supra, 432) our statute contemplates that the order shall not issue unless the court “has adjudged” that the public interest does require it. Laws 1955, c. 312; Wyman v. DeGregory, 100 N. H. 163, 167.
This in my judgment purports to impose upon the courts a nonjudicial function: the determination of an issue of executive policy, of whether amnesty should be granted in the light of information peculiarly within the knowledge of the governmental branch charged with enforcement of the laws. Opinion of the Justices, 85 N. H. 562, 567-569. See Rogge, Federal Immunity Act, 45 Cal. L. Rev. 109, 126. This issue is political (see Dixon, Immunity and Separation of Powers, 23 Geo. Wash. L. Rev. 501, 627, 656); and not one of justiciable rights in adversary proceedings. Petition of Turner, 97 N. H. 449, 450. See Attorney General v. Morin, 93 N. H. 40, 50-53. In this connection it is significant that none of the numerous other immunity provisions found in our statutes (cf. RSA 356:6; 609:10) provides for judicial intervention, but that all are self-executing, being called into play merely by the decision of the interested representative of the executive branch that the incriminating inquiry shall be made. See Sixth Report, N. H. Judicial Council (1956) p. 51.
The duty which Laws 1955, c. 312, imposes upon the courts is hardly to be classed with supervision of the financial affairs of counties. Attorney General v. Morin, supra, 49. Any analogy to issuance of a search warrant is at best superficial (see Taylor, Grand Inquest, 298; 22 U. Chi. L. Rev. 657, 667-669) and furnishes *182no precedent for imposing upon the judiciary, in contravention of the Constitution, duties which are concededly administrative in character.
If by any stretch of the imagination the issue for the court can be thought to be a judicial one, then the witness has been deprived of due process of law (Mullane v. Central Hanover Tr. Co., 339 U. S. 306, 314) because the statute has been held to entitle him neither to notice nor to a right to be heard on the issue of whether immunity shall be granted; and he has had neither. Wyman v. DeGregory, 100 N. H. 163, supra. I would sustain the exceptions.