Court Opinion

ID: 9427815
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:21:59.369029+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:09.914368
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Brennan,
concurring in the judgment.
The Fifth Amendment guarantees the right to be free from compulsory self-incrimination. It permits an individual to refuse to answer questions; but it does not give him the right to answer falsely. United States v. Mandujano, 425 U. S. 564, 584-585 (1976) (Brennan, J., concurring in judgment); United States v. Wong, 431 U. S. 174 (1977). When the Government compels testimony via a grant of immunity it is constitutionally required to place the victim in a position similar to the one he would have occupied had he exercised his Fifth Amendment privilege. The scope of immunity, in other words, must be “coextensive with the scope of the privilege.” Kastigar v. United States, 406 U. S. 441, 449 (1972). This does not, however, bar a prosecution for perjury committed in the course of immunized testimony, even though such a prosecution will obviously place the witness in a worse position than he would have been in had he invoked the privilege. The perjury exception seems to have two sources. First, it stems from the aforementioned fact that prior to the immunity grant the witness had no Fifth Amendment right to answer falsely, and, second, it flows from the simple reality that affording the witness a right to lie with impunity would render the entire immunity transaction futile.
Because I think it follows from the logic and exigencies of the perjury exception that the Government should be permitted to introduce other portions of the immunized testimony to prove elements of the offense of perjury, I concur in the judgment reversing the decision of the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. And because I find this ground adequate to decide the present case I see no reason to explore the terrain which the majority probes via what is in one sense dicta. *133More particularly, (1) I do not think that the present result compels the conclusion that there are no special constitutional constraints on the use to which immunized testimony may be put in a perjury prosecution, and (2) I am by no means persuaded that the result here would be correct were this a prosecution for false swearing occurring after the immunized testimony rather than in the course of it.
Mr.. Justice .Blackmun,
with .whom Mr. Justice.Marshall joins, concurring in the judgment.
I do not join the Court’s opinion. I agree, however, that the Court of Appeals too narrowly confined the use of immunized testimony in the prosecution of respondent for giving false testimony. I do not fully subscribe to the Court’s holding that “neither the statute nor the Fifth Amendment requires that the admissibility of immunized testimony be governed by any different rules than other testimony at a trial for making false statements.” Ante, at 117. And I do not fully agree with the Court’s conclusion that the practical effect of asserting the privilege against self-incrimination is an unimportant factor in determining whether a grant of immunity is coextensive with Fifth Amendment protection. See ante, at 125. I therefore concur only in the judgment.
The Court’s statement of its holding troubles me primarily for two reasons. First, it apparently makes no distinction between a prosecution for false testimony given under a grant of immunity and a prosecution for false testimony in other contexts. This case concerns the use of immunized testimony to prove that respondent made contemporaneous false statements. There is no occasion to determine whether the immunized testimony could have been used to prove perjury or false statements occurring at some other time. The Court thus states its holding in language that is broader than necessary. At the moment, I am not prepared to go so far.
Second, I am not sure I agree that the use of immunized *134testimony in perjury prosecutions requires no special analysis with respect to the usual rules of evidence. How the testimony is to be used may well be an important factor in determining whether the protection against self-incrimination has been honored. For example, a witness’ truthful admission of prior perjury conceivably might be protected from use even though independent evidence of such a prior similar crime were admissible. Again, I would prefer to await further developments before deciding this question.
Perhaps a more fundamental reservation about the Court’s opinion concerns its attempted distinction between, on the one hand, the protection afforded by the privilege against self-incrimination and, on the other, the effect of the invocation of the privilege. Since the privilege itself is defined in terms of the incriminating effect of truthful testimony, it does not seem irrational to weigh alternative methods for protecting this constitutional right in terms of their effect as well. As the Court demonstrates, ante, at 124-125, a grant of immunity may be a constitutionally adequate response to invocation of the privilege without perfectly replicating the effect of total silence, at least where a civil use of the testimony is concerned. But that observation, for me, does not obviate the relevance of a comparison between silence and immunity in determining whether the protection afforded by the latter ensures that the privilege against self-incrimination has been properly preserved. Whether as a matter of logic, history, or experience, it does not follow that an analogy is robbed of all force merely because it is not always or singly controlling in every imaginable circumstance. Compare Kastigar v. United States, 406 U. S. 441, 449 (1972), and Ullmann v. United States, 350 U. S. 422, 438 (1956), with ante, at 127-128. See also O. Holmes, The Common Law 1 (1881). The Court’s cases long have regarded the right to remain silent in the face of compelled incrimination as a touchstone for Fifth Amendment protection. See Kastigar v. United States, 406 U. S., at 461; Brown v. Walker, 161 U. S. *135591, 596-597 (1896). The Court may be prepared now to deviate from that course; I am not so prepared.
Nonetheless, I remain convinced that “[t]he Fifth Amendment privilege against compulsory self-incrimination provides no protection for the commission of perjury.” United States v. Mandujano, 425 U. S. 564, 609 (1976) (opinion concurring in judgment). The privilege operates only to protect the witness from compulsion of truthful testimony of an incriminating nature. Perjury or the making of. false statements under a grant of immunity thus violates a basic assumption upon which the privilege and hence the immunity depend. Preserving the integrity of the immunity “bargain,” ante, at 130, by allowing the use of immunized testimony for the limited purpose of proving that the terms of immunity have been criminally breached, is an integral part of the “rational accommodation between the imperatives of the privilege and the legitimate demands of government” upon which the entire theory of immunity rests. Kastigar v. United States, 406 U. S., at 446. See Glickstein v. United States, 222 U. S. 139, 141 (1911); United States v. Tramunti, 500 F. 2d 1334, 1342 (CA2), cert. denied, 419 U. S. 1079 (1974). Prosecutions for perjury or making false statements differ in this respect from all other instances in which, but for the grant of immunity, the witness’ testimony might be used. It is for this reason, in my view, that they have been regarded as “a ‘narrow exception’ to the principle that a witness should be treated as if he had remained silent after invoking the Fifth Amendment privilege.” Ante, at 128. Since I find this ground sufficient to dispose of the present case, I need not decide at this juncture whether I fully agree with what seem to be the broader implications of the Court’s analysis and opinion.