Court Opinion

ID: 9425900
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:16:09.329894+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:58.195917
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice White,
concurring in the result.
The issue in this case is not simply whether a lawyer may be held in contempt for advising his client to plead the Fifth Amendment. Obviously, put that *473way, he may not. The issue is whether, after his client’s self-incrimination objection to testifying or complying with a subpoena is overruled and his client is ordered to answer, the lawyer is in contempt of court when he advises the client not to obey the court’s order. I agree with the Court’s judgment that the contempt judgment against the lawyer cannot stand in the circumstances of this case.
Although the proceeding in which he is called is not criminal, it is established that a witness may not be required to answer a question if there is some rational basis for believing that it will incriminate him, at least without at that time being assured that neither it nor its fruits may be used against him. The object of the Amendment “was to insure that a person should not be compelled, when acting as a witness in any investigation, to give testimony which might tend to show that he himself had committed a crime.” Counselman v. Hitchcock, 142 U. S. 547, 562 (1892); McCarthy v. Arndstein, 266 U. S. 34, 40 (1924); Lefkowitz v. Turley, 414 U. S. 70, 77 (1973). In any of these noncriminal 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.” Id., at 78; Kastigar v. United States, 406 U. S. 441 (1972).
If the witness, having objected on Fifth Amendment grounds, is granted immunity against the use of his testimony and its fruits in a later prosecution, our cases hold that the danger of self-incrimination is removed and the privilege wholly satisfied. The purpose of the relevant part of the Fifth Amendment is to prevent compelled self-incrimination, not to protect private information. Testimony demanded of a witness may be very private ' indeed, but unless it is incriminating and protected by *474the Amendment or unless protected by one of the evi-dentiary privileges, it must be disclosed. When the objection interposed is that of self-incrimination, a grant of immunity removes any ground for a refusal to answer and for a good-faith suggestion by counsel that the client not answer, however private his information may be. Should the attorney then advise his client not to answer, there should be no barrier to his conviction for contempt.
But what of the case, such as we have here, where the claim of privilege is overruled because the witness has not carried his burden of demonstrating to the satisfaction of the trial judge that the sought-after answer may incriminate him and there is apparently no occasion for an assurance of immunity? It seems to me that in such event the witness is nevertheless protected by a constitutionally imposed use immunity if he answers in response to the order and under threat of contempt. If, contrary to the expectations of the judge but consistent with the claim of the witness and his lawyer, the State later finds the answer or its fruits incriminating and offers either against the witness in a criminal prosecution, the witness has a valid objection to the evidence on the ground that he was coerced by a court order to reveal it and that it is therefore compelled self-incrimination barred from use by the Fifth Amendment.
In Garrity v. New Jersey, 385 U. S. 493 (1967), the State Attorney General summoned police officers to an inquiry into the fixing of traffic tickets. Following warnings that if they did not answer they would be removed from office and that anything they said might be used against them in a criminal proceeding, they were interrogated about the conduct of their official duties. No immunity of any kind was offered or available under state law. The questions were answered and the answers later used over their objections in a conspiracy prosecution of *475the officers. The Court held that "the protection of the individual under the Fourteenth Amendment against coerced statements prohibits use in subsequent criminal proceedings of statements obtained under threat of removal from office, and that it extends to all, whether they are policemen or other members of our body politic.” Id., at 500. Lefkowitz v. Turley, supra, reaffirmed this holding, 414 U. S., at 79-80, and declared that absent formal immunity protections, "if he is nevertheless compelled to answer, his answers are inadmissible against him in a later criminal prosecution. Bram v. United States, [168 U. S. 532 (1897)]; Boyd v. United States, [116 U. S. 616 (1886)].” Id., at 78.
Given this ultimate immunity from being incriminated by his responses to his interrogation, a refusal to answer should subject the witness to contempt without the necessity of appellate review extending to the merits of the Fifth Amendment claim. If the State makes sufficiently clear that it recognizes this established rule, the attorney would have no business advising his client to disobey the court’s order to answer. But the possibility, much less the reality, of a compelled answer, along with its fruits, being immunized from later use was hardly brought home to this petitioner or to his client. Had the client been granted immunity or had he been advised of its functional equivalent — that although he was not immune from criminal prosecution with respect to the subject matter of his answers, neither his answer nor its fruits could later be used against him, Kastigar v. United States, supra — it may well have been that his choice, and the advice of petitioner, would have been quite different.
As the matter stands, nothing of the sort was clear in this case to either the petitioner or to his client. As far as can be ascertained from this record, the trial judge insisted that petitioner’s client answer without any assur-*476anee then that the forthcoming answers could not be used to convict him in the event that the judge was wrong about their not being incriminating. I therefore agree that it was error to hold the attorney in contempt for advising his client not to answer. Cf. Lefkowitz v. Turley, supra; Gardner v. Broderick, 392 U. S. 273 (1968); Sanitation Men v. Sanitation Comm’r, 392 U. S. 280 (1968). At the very least, if there were still a live controversy between the State and petitioner’s client, which apparently there is not, the contempt judgment would be vacated arid the client would be given another opportunity to answer, having in mind the controlling constitutional principles. Murphy v. Waterfront Comm’n, 378 U. S. 52, 80 (1964).