Court Opinion

ID: 9730693
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 15:20:55.933209+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:26:08.655336
License: Public Domain

P ashman, J.,
concurring and dissenting. I concur in the majority’s conclusion that the Director’s threat to impose sanctions upon those who choose to invoke the privilege against self-incrimination amounts to an unconstitutional attempt to coerce a waiver of Lhat privilege. It is therefore clear that the Director may not, in any way, seek to carry out that threat. However, I cannot accept the majority’s holding that no constitutional infirmity is present in the requirement that plaintiffs respond to the questionnaire and invoke their privilege only with respect to particular questions. Inasmuch as the questionnaire has been distributed to a finite and well-defined group of individuals suspected *519oí criminal activity, a licensee’s claim of privilege as to a particular question will, for all intents and purposes, single him out as the perpetrator of an offense, and lead the Director to focus his investigation upon that individual’s past conduct. Such a state of affairs will therefore impermissibly “oblig[e] [a licensee] 'to [spotlight his] guilt [in order] to avoid admitting - it.’ ” Marchetti v. United States, 390 U. S. 39, 50, 88 S. Ct. 697, 704, 19 L. Ed. 2d 889 (1968). Consequently, I am of the view that plaintiffs have a constitutional right to refrain from responding to these questions in any manner whatsoever.
I

Ri-peness

Although individual members of the plaintiff class have not as of yet invoked the right not to respond to particular questions, the issues herein posed are ripe for judicial resolution. At the present juncture, plaintiffs are faced with the Hobson’s choice of either answering the questions and thereby waiving any valid claims of privilege they may possess, or refusing to respond and risking the imposition of sanctions should a court later determine that their privilege claims lack merit. Plaintiffs are thus placed in a dilemma that it was the very purpose of the Declaratory Judgment Act to ameliorate. See, e. g., Abbott Laboratories v. Gardner, 387 U. S. 136, 152, 87 S. Ct. 1507, 18 L. Ed. 2d 681 (1967).
Moreover, delay in resolution of plaintiffs’ claims would run counter to the policies underlying the constitutional prohibition of compelled self-incrimination. The uncertainty existing with respect to the applicability of the privilege in this case, if not presently resolved, undoubtedly will chill the assertion of potentially valid claims of privilege. To therefore require plaintiffs to refuse to respond in order to have their claims adjudicated “is, in effect, to contend that they should be denied the protection of ... [a constitutional] privilege intended to relieve [them] of the necessity of *520making a choice between incriminating themselves and risking serious punishments for refusing to do so.” Albertson v. Subversive Activities Control Board, 382 U. S. 70, 76, 86 S. Ct. 194, 197, 15 L. Ed. 2d 165 (1965).
The issue herein tendered is purely legal in nature: whether plaintiffs can be constitutionally compelled to respond to the questionnaire. Delay will therefore not result in the unearthing of facts which will make resolution an easier task. Moreover, there is no question that a real dispute exists between the parties and that this dispute will not be mooted by the future course of events. Hence, the matter should be resolved at the present time. See, e. g., Abbott Laboratories, supra, 387 U. S. at 149, 87 S. Ct. 1507; Albertson, supra, 382 U. S. at 75-76, 86 S. Ct. 194.1
These same considerations support the conclusion that plaintiffs' claims of undue coercion are ripe for judicial resolution. If plaintiffs invoke the privilege, they run the risk that the Director will be able to carry out his threats and revoke their licenses. If through fear of sanctions they forego their right not to incriminate themselves and a *521court later determines that the Director’s threats were ultra vires, plaintiffs will have been coerced into relinquishing their constitutional rights. The Director’s actions are thus exerting a present chilling effect upon plaintiffs’ assertion of the privilege. The legality of those actions should therefore be determined at the present time.
II

Applicability of Privilege Against Compelled Self-Incrimination

The privilege against compelled self-incrimination is the mainstay of our accusatorial system of criminal justice and, as such, is applicable to states through the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Malloy v. Hogan, 378 U. S. 1, 84 S. Ct. 1489, 12 L. Ed. 2d 653 (1964). Moreover, this privilege — although not written into the New Jersey Constitution — is firmly established as a part of our common law and has been incorporated into our Rules of Evidence. See Evid R. 23, 24 and 25; In re Ippolito, 75 N. J. 435, 440 (1978); State v. Vinegra, 73 N. J. 484, 488-489 (1977). Consequently, whenever a court “is confronted with the question of a compelled disclosure that has an incriminating potential [,] the judicial scrutiny [must be] a close one.” California v. Byers, 402 U. S. 424, 427, 91 S. Ct. 1535, 1537, 29 L. Ed. 2d 9 (1971).
The situations in which the privilege can be invoked are broad in scope. An individual is not merely protected from being involuntarily called as a witness against himself in a criminal prosecution. He is also privileged not to answer official questions put to him in any other context, civil or criminal, formal or informal, where the answers might incriminate him in future proceedings. Lefkowitz v. Turley, 414 U. S. 70, 77, 94 S. Ct. 316, 38 L. Ed. 2d 274 (1973). Moreover, it matters not whether the self-incriminatory admissions are sought to be obtained through oral testimony or written responses. See, e. g., Marchetti v. United States, *522supra; Albertson v. Subversive Activities Control Board, supra, 382 U. S. at 78, 86 S. Ct. 194. In either situation, the privilege can be invoked.
Thus, for example, the privilege is applicable to testimony-given during grand jury proceedings, see, e.g., In re Tuso, 73 N. J. 575 (1977); information requested during hearings before state investigative committees, see, e. g., In re Ippolito, 75 N. J. 435 (1978); and admissions sought during official inquiries into the qualifications of licensed professionals, see e. g., Lefkowitz v. Turley, 414 U. S. 70, 78, 94 S. Ct. 316, 38 L. Ed. 2d 274 (1973). Most importantly for present purposes, the privilege may be invoked with respect to information sought to be elicited through forms and questionnaires prepared by government agencies. See, e. g., Marchetti v. United States, supra (IRS); Grosso v. United States, 390 U. S. 62, 88 S. Ct. 709, 19 L. Ed. 2d 906 (1968) (IRS); Haynes v. United States, 390 U. S. 85, 88 S. Ct. 722, 19 L. Ed. 2d 923 (1968) (Treasury Department); Albertson v. Subversive Activities Control Board, supra (SACB). There is thus no doubt that the privilege is applicable in the present context.
Ill

Attempt to Coerce a Waiver of the Privilege

It is well settled that an agent of the State cannot pursue a course of action whose object is to penalize an individual’s assertion of his constitutional rights. See, e. g., Bordenkircher v. Hayes, 434 U. S. 357, 362, 98 S. Ct. 663, 667, 54 L. Ed. 2d 604, 610 (1978). Consequently, a state agency may neither impose nor threaten to. impose sanctions upon a person because he elects to exercise his right not to tender self-incriminatory testimony. Lefkowitz v. Cunningham, 431 U. S. 801, 806, 97 S. Ct. 2132, 53 L. Ed. 2d 1 (1977); Lefkowitz v. Turley, supra, 414 U. S. at 81-82, 94 S. Ct. 316; Garrity v. New Jersey, 385 U. S. 493, 500, 87 S. Ct. 616, 17 *523L. Ed. 2d 562 (1967). The State is not merely precluded from punishing criminally one who asserts the privilege. Since “the touchstone of the Fifth [and Fourteenth] Amendment [s] is compulsion,” the State cannot impose sanctions of any kind — including economic sanctions — which are capable of coercing the self-incrimination which the Constitution forbids. See, e. g., Lefkowitz v. Cunningham, supra, 431 U. S. at 806, 97 S. Ct. 2132.
In the present case, the Director informed each plaintiff that assertion of the privilege might subject his license to revocation. A more clear-cut case of patently unconstitutional conduct cannot be imagined. In Lefkowitz v. Turley, supra, the Supreme Court struck down as unconstitutional a New York statute which conditioned a contractor’s right to transact business with the State upon a waiver of his privilege against self-incrimination. In its holding, the Court emphasized that a waiver “secured under threat of substantial economic sanction cannot be termed voluntary.” Id. at 82-83, 94 S. Ct. at 316. A similar result was reached in Garrity v. New Jersey, supra. In that case police officers suspected of having fixed traffic tickets were informed that they would be removed from office if they invoked the privilege during the Attorney General’s inquiry into their past conduct. The Court squarely held that the State’s actions in this regard were unconstitutional because the police were presented with a choice between surrendering their constitutional rights or their jobs. Id. at 498-500, 87 S. Ct. at 616. See also Lefkowitz v. Cunningham, supra (State cannot remove a political party officer from his position or bar him from holding any public office because he has refused to waive his privilege against compelled self-incrimination) .
The similarity of the present case to Cunningham, Turley, and Garrity leaves no doubt that the Director has transcended constitutional bounds. The revocation of plaintiffs’ licenses is at least as substantial an economic sanction as the loss of employment occasioned in Cunningham and Garrity and *524the deprivation of public contracting rights condemned in Twrley. Consequently, the Director may not in any way attempt to carry out these threats. Should he do so, judicial remedies are available.
In addition to confronting plaintiffs with the threat of license revocation, the Director also stated that a licensee’s waiver of his privilege “[would] be a mitigating factor” in any future disciplinary proceedings and that those who insisted upon exercising the privilege “[would] be dealt with accordingly.” The State asserts that these statements are not proscribed by Cunningham, Turley and Garrity because the Director did not threaten to “penalize” an assertion of the privilege but merely to “reward” a waiver thereof. In effect, the State is asking this Court to elevate form over substance. Notwithstanding the semantics employed by the Director, it is clear that he is promising to> treat more harshly — i. e., to penalize —• those licensees who invoke the privilege simply because they will have asserted their constitutional rights. His threats therefore amount to an unconstitutional attempt to coerce a waiver of the privilege.
The State also argues that Supreme Court decisions upholding the validity of “plea bargaining” between a prosecutor and a criminal suspect, see, e.g., Brady v. United States, 397 U. S. 742, 90 S. Ct. 1463, 25 L. Ed. 2d 747 (1970), immunize the Director’s promises of leniency from successful constitutional attack. In both situations, the State maintains, an individual is induced to incriminate himself in return for favorable treatment. A careful review of the “plea bargaining cases,” however, demonstrates clearly that the two situations are not analogous.
Although the Supreme Court has “tolerated” the use of the plea bargaining procedure, see Bordenkircher v. Hayes, 434 U. S. 357, 360, 98 S. Ct. 663, 666, 54 L. Ed. 2d 604, 609 (1978), it has consistently stated that such a procedure is not one which should be utilized in an “ideal world” since it results in many criminal suspects incriminating themselves and foregoing their rights to a jury trial. See, e. g., Bordenk*525ircher, supra, 434 U. S. at 3601, 98 S. Ct. at 666. 54 L. Ed. 2d at 609; Blackledge v. Allison, 431 U. S. 63, 97 S. Ct. 1621, 52 L. Ed. 2d 736 (1977). Nonetheless, the procedure has been upheld against constitutional attack. The Court’s main reason for reaching this result is that many concrete advantages flow to both the State and the accused when the latter foregoes his right to trial. As stated in Brady, supra:
* * * For a defendant who sees slight possibility of acquittal, the advantages of pleading guilty and limiting the probable penalty are obvious • — ■ his exposure is reduced, the correctional processes can begin immediately, and the practical burdens of a trial are eliminated. For the State there are also advantages — the more promptly imposed punishment after an admission of guilt may moz'e effectively attain the objectives of punishment; and with the avoidance of trial, scarce judicial and prosecutorial resources are conserved for those cases in which there is a substantial issue of the defendant’s guilt or in which there is substantial doubt that the State can sustain its burden of proof.
[397 U. S. at 752, 90 S. Ct. at 1471; footnote omitted]
See State v. Corbitt, 74 N. J. 379, 394 (1977), aff’d - U. S. -, 99 S. Ct. 492, 58 L. Ed. 2d 466 (1978). It is the presence of these substantial benefits flowing to both the State and the accused which justifies the practice of plea bargaining. See, e. g., Bordenkircher, supra, 434 U. S. at 363, 98 S. Ct. at 668, 54 L. Ed. 2d at 611; State v. Corbitt, supra, 74 N. J. at 396.
The “plea bargaining” decisions also emphasize the procedural protections accorded a suspect with whom the prosecutor wishes to negotiate. Thus, the Court has recognized the suspect’s right to have counsel present during bargaining sessions, see, e.g., Brady, supra; the need for a public record indicating that a guilty plea was knowingly and voluntarily made, see, e. g., Boykin v. Alabama, 395 U. S. 238, 89 S. Ct. 1709, 23 L. Ed. 2d 274 (1969); and the requirement that a prosecutor’s plea bargaining promises not be breached, see, e. g., Santobello v. New York, 404 U. S. 257, 92 S. Ct. 495, 30 L. Ed. 2d 427 (1971). Most impor*526tantly, the Court has emphasized that a guilty plea is entered in open court before a judge who must satisfy himself that the plea is voluntarily and intelligently tendered and that a factual basis supports the plea. See, e. g., Brady, supra, 397 U. S. at 754-755, 90 S. Ct. 1463; State v. Corbitt, supra, 74 N. J. at 396. In this way, defendants are prevented from involuntarily and unnecessarily foregoing their rights to stand trial and to not incriminate themselves.
In the present ease, the factors justifying the validity of the plea bargain are simply not present. The Director, unlike a plea bargaining prosecutor, does not possess any evidence pointing to the guilt of any particular plaintiff. Hence, a licensee who waives his privilege will increase, not diminish, the potential that he will be subjected to sanctions. The use of such waivers will not result in a saving of scarce judicial resources. Moreover, the Director has not attempted to demonstrate that absent promises of leniency his investigative ability will be severely handicapped.2 The “mutuality of advantage” emphasized in Brady thus is not here present.
In addition, plaintiffs will not be accorded the procedural protections guaranteed a plea-bargaining defendant. No judge is present to ensure that a licensee’s1 waiver is intelligently made after a consideration of all available options and their attendant risks.
The Director’s “promises of leniency,” as his threats of license revocation, thus constitute an attempt to coerce a *527waiver of the privilege against self-incrimination. Should the Director seek to enforce these threats, plaintiffs have the right to have his conduct enjoined by a court of law. This is not to say, however, that should the Director uncover evidence of a particular licensee’s guilt he may not consider as a mitigating factor that the licensee has volunteered self-incriminatory information. Such a voluntary proffering of information may in certain circumstances bear upon the licensee’s repentance for having engaged in illegal conduct and hence his propensity to commit similar crimes in the future. This may be considered in combination with all other aggravating and mitigating circumstances surrounding the perpetration of the offense. What the Director may not do is to implement a course of action whose object is to treat more harshly all those who have invoked their privilege simply because they have elected to exercise their constitutional rights.
IY

Plaintiffs’ Bight To Refuse To Respond At All To The Questionnaire

Without detailed examination into the precise circumstances involved in this controversy, the majority holds that the Constitution does not accord plaintiffs the right to refuse to respond at all to the questionnaire. Instead, it holds that plaintiffs’ rights will be sufficiently protected by allowing each licensee to affirmatively assert the privilege with respect to any questions whose answers might tend to incriminate him. Such a holding both contravenes the rationale underlying the privilege against self-incrimination and directly contradicts the holdings of relevant Supreme Court cases. Consequently, I dissent from this portion of the majority’s holding.
The basic goal underlying the privilege against self-incrimination is that the government must establish guilt by evidence independently and freely secured and may not *528by coercion “prove a charge against an accused out of his own mouth.” Malloy v. Hogan, supra, 378 U. S. at 8, 84 S. Ct. 1493. In keeping with this purpose, the privilege “not only extends to answers that would in themselves support a conviction . . . but likewise embraces those which would furnish a link in the chain of evidence needed to prosecute . . . .” Hoffman v. United States, 341 U. S. 479, 486, 71 S. Ct. 814, 818, 95 L. Ed. 1118 (1951); see In re Ippolito, supra, 75 N. J. at 440-441.
In certain circumstances, an individual’s affirmative invocation of the privilege with respect to particular questions will just as surely provide a “link in the chain of evidence needed to prosecute” as an outright admission that he had engaged in particular conduct. That is, by bringing his identity to the attention of the State, an individual may significantly increase the possibility of future prosecution. In such a case, the mere invocation of the privilege constitutes an “injurious disclosure” in that it “oblige [s] [an individual] To [spotlight his] guilt [in order] to avoid admitting it.’ ” Marchetti v. United States, supra, 390 U. S. at 50, 52, 88 S. Ct. 697, 704. If such circumstances exist, the individual has a constitutional right not to respond at all to the governmental inquiry. See, e. g., Marchetti, supra; Grosso v. United States, supra; Haynes v. United States, supra; California v. Byers, supra.
Of course, the privilege against self-incrimination will not justify an individual in refusing to disclose his name in connection with the administration of all government programs designed to secure information from citizens in order that proper legislative purposes be accomplished. However, it is also clear that an individual need not expressly invoke the privilege in response to a governmental inquiry if such an invocation would create “ Teal and appreciable,’ and not merely 'imaginative and unsubstantial’ hazards” that he would thereby single himself out as the perpetrator of a past offense and serve to focus attention on criminal activities which otherwise might not have come to light. Marchetti, *529supra, 390 U. S. at 48, 88 S. Ct. 697; see, e. g., Grosso, supra, 390 U. S. at 66-67, 88 S. Ct. 709; Byers, supra, 402 U. S. at 429-430, 91 S. Ct. 1535.
The factors to be considered in determining whether such a “real and appreciable” hazard is manifest include the purposes underlying the governmental inquiry, the number and types of persons who are required to respond to the inquiry, and the nature of the questions asked. If the governmental inquiry is non-criminal and regulatory in nature and the questions are facially neutral and directed to the public at large, an individual has no constitutional right to refuse to respond at all. Instead, he may, at most, affirmatively invoke the privilege with respect to particular matters. See, e. g., California v. Byers, supra; United States v. Sullivan, 274 U. S. 259, 47 S. Ct. 607, 71 L. Ed. 1037 (1927). Given the wide cross section of persons to whom such inquiries are directed as well as the regulatory context in which the inquiry is conducted, no “real and appreciable” danger exists that the mere invocation of the privilege will come to the attention of law enforcement agencies and lead them to uncover a crime which would otherwise have remained secret.
If, however, the purpose — or at least one purpose — of the governmental inquiry is that of bringing to light past instances of illegal conduct and the questions are directed at a “highly selective group inherently suspect of criminal activities,” the individual has the privilege not to respond to the inquiry at all. Albertson v. Subversive Activities Control Board, supra, 382 U. S. at 79, 86 S. Ct. 194; see, e. g., Marchetti, supra, 390 U. S. at 47-49, 88 S. Ct. 697; Grosso, supra, 390 U. S. at 64-67, 88 S. Ct. 709; Haynes, supra, 390 U. S. at 96-97, 88 S. Ct. 722. In such a situation, affirmative invocation of the privilege would have “the direct and unmistakable consequence of incriminating [the individual]” inasmuch as he would have singled himself out to be the target of a criminal investigation. Marchetti, supra, 390 U. S. at 49, 88 S. Ct. 697.
*530In the present ease, the major, if not sole, purpose underlying the Director’s inquiry was that of discovering which of the plaintiffs had engaged in past illegal conduct. The questionnaire was not distributed to the public at large but rather to a finite and well-defined group of persons who were suspected of having committed illegal acts. Two of the questions listed (numbers 5 and 6, see ante at 515-516) required plaintiffs to state whether they had perpetrated specified offenses and to convey the details surrounding their commission. These questions can thus in no way be labelled “facially neutral.” Obligating each plaintiff to identify himself and affirmatively invoke the privilege with respect to these questions would therefore create a “real and appreciable” danger that he would spotlight his guilt and thus substantially increase the potential for prosecution.
Although the remaining questions appear to be facially neutral, uncertainty exists as to whether they were included in order to further DABC’s regulatory, as opposed to prosecutorial, goals. In any event, however, the presence of questions 5 and 6 “taints” the entire questionnaire, and hence plaintiffs have a constitutional right not to respond to any question contained therein. See Marchetti, supra; Grosso, supra; Haynes, supra. Should the Director, in pursuance of his regulatory functions, desire to reissue the remaining questions in a new questionnaire, the determination of whether plaintiffs can refuse to respond may be addressed at that time.
In a belated effort to justify its holding, the majority asserts that since the director possesses the statutory authority “to subpoena [plaintiffs] and examine them under oath as to the same matters contained in the questionnaire, subject to their right to claim [the] privilege [with respect to particular questions],” no constitutional infirmity can possibly exist in requiring plaintiffs to affirmatively invoke the privilege on the questionnaire. See ante at 511. The majority could also have mentioned that the Director could even prevent the affirmative invocation of the privilege by grant*531ing plaintiffs immunity from prosecution. See, e. g., Lefkowitz v. Turley, supra. What the majority fails to recognize is that the whole idea behind the privilege is that there are both “right ways” and “wrong ways” to secure evidence, and agents of the state cannot conduct themselves in the “wrong way.”
Were the Director required to subpoena and interrogate each of the 1,500 members of plaintiff class, a strong possibility exists that the time and expense involved would convince him to abandon or narrow his areas of investigation. At the least, one would expect that the Director would be forced to question only those whom he had some grounds to suspect. Thus the initial burden of choosing those to investigate would properly rest on the Director. In order to avoid such a result, the majority holds that plaintiffs must help the Director uncover evidence which might incriminate themselves. It thus reads the policies and mandates of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments right out of the Constitution.
Accordingly, I would hold that plaintiffs have a right to refuse to respond to the questionnaire in any manner.
For modification and affirmance — Chief Justice Hughes and Justices Mountain, Sullivan, Clieeord, Schkeiber and Handler — 6.
For reversal — Justice P ashman — 1.

The Supreme Court’s decision in California Bankers Ass’n v. Shultz, 416 U. S. 21, 94 S. Ct. 1494, 39 L. Ed. 2d 812 (1974), does not require — nor even suggest — a contrary result. In Shultz the Justices held premature claims by bank depositors that certain reporting requirements of the Bank Secrecy Act of 1970 were violative of the privilege against compelled self-incrimination. Title II of the Act mandated, inter alia, that any depositor engaging in specified foreign or domestic monetary transactions disclose the nature of those transactions to the government. In dismissing the depositors’ Fifth Amendment claims on pi «maturity grounds, the Justices emphasized that no plaintiff had alleged either (1) that the information required to be disclosed would tend to be incriminating or (2) that he had engaged in or intended to engage in any transactions subject to the reporting requirement.
In the present case, however, neither of these factors is present. Plaintiffs have alleged that the questions seek to elicit self-incriminatory responses. More importantly, the disclosures deal with past acts which have already occurred — not future acts which might or might not transpire.

Indeed, recent actions taken by the Director indicate quite forcefully that his ability to police the liquor industry is not dependent upon the use of industry-wide questionnaires and “promises of leniency.” On January 2, 1979, the Director charged 30 specific wholesale firms with a total of 56 complaints, including the giving and receipt of unlawful kickbacks, violations of retail credit rules, and conducting illegal sale contests. See Newark Star Ledger, January 3, 1979 edition, p. 1, col. 1. The information leading to the film; of these charges could not possibly have been obtained from the questionnaires here at issue, since these questionnaires have not yet been answered by plaintiffs.