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cts against derivative use
of compelled testimony, a prosecution cannot be based on incriminating evidence revealed
only as the result of compliance with an extremely broad subpoena).
other hand, to foreclose the States from compelling testimony because
they could not immunize a witness in a subsequent ‘‘foreign’’
prosecution would severely limit state law enforcement efforts.
Therefore, the Court emphasized the ‘‘use’’ restriction rationale of
Counselman and announced that as a ‘‘constitutional rule, a state
witness could not be compelled to incriminate himself under federal
law unless federal authorities were precluded from using either his
testimony or evidence derived from it,’’ and thus formulated a use
restriction to that effect. 234 Then, while refusing to adopt the
course because of statutory interpretation reasons, the Court indicated
that use restriction in a federal regulatory scheme requiring
the reporting of incriminating information was ‘‘in principle an attractive
and apparently practical resolution of the difficult problem
before us,’’ citing Murphy with apparent approval. 235
Congress thereupon enacted a statute replacing all prior immunity
statutes and adopting a use-immunity restriction only. 236
Soon tested, this statute was sustained in Kastigar v. United
States. 237 ‘‘[P]rotection coextensive with the privilege is the degree
of protection which the Constitution requires,’’ wrote Justice Powell
for the Court, ‘‘and is all that the Constitution requires. . . .’’ 238
‘‘Transactional immunity, which accords full immunity from prosecution
for the offense to which the compelled testimony relates, affords
the witness considerably broader protection than does the
Fifth Amendment privilege. The privilege has never been construed
to mean that one who invokes it cannot subsequently be prosecuted.
Its sole concern is to afford protection against being ‘forced
to give testimony leading to the infliction of penalties affixed to .
. . criminal acts.’ Immunity from the use of compelled testimony
and evidence derived directly and indirectly therefrom affords this
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1406 AMENDMENT 5—RIGHTS OF PERSONS
239 406 U.S. at 453. Joining Justice Powell in the opinion were Justices Stewart,
White, and Blackmun, and Chief Justice Burger. Justices Douglas and Marshall dissented,
contending that a ban on use could not be enforced even if a use ban was
constitutionally adequate. Id. at 462, 467. Justices Brennan and Rehnquist did not
participate but Justice Brennan’s views that transactional immunity was required
had been previously stated. Piccirillo v. New York, 400 U.S. 548, 552 (1971) (dissenting).
See also New Jersey v. Portash, 440 U.S. 451 (1979) (prosecution use of
defendant’s immunized testimony to impeach him at trial violates self-incrimination
clause). Neither the clause nor the statute prevents the perjury prosecution of an
immunized witness or the use of all his testimony to prove the commission of perjury.
United States v. Apfelbaum, 445 U.S. 115 (1980). See also United States v.
Wong, 431 U.S. 174 (1977); United States v. Mandujano, 425 U.S. 564 (1976). Because
use immunity is limited, a witness granted use immunity for grand jury testimony
may validly invoke his Fifth Amendment privilege in a civil deposition proceeding
when asked whether he had ‘‘so testified’’ previously, the deposition testimony
not being covered by the earlier immunity. Pillsbury Co. v. Conboy, 459 U.S.
248 (1983).
240 Boyd v. United States, 116 U.S. 616 (1886). But see Fisher v. United States,
425 U.S. 391 (1976).
241 See discussion supra under ‘‘Development and Scope.’’
242 Shapiro v. United States, 335 U.S. 1, 33 (1948), (quoting Davis v. United
States, 328 U.S. 582, 589–90 (1946), (quoting in turn Wilson v. United States, 221
U.S. 361, 380 (1911))). Wilson is the source of the required-records doctrine in its
dicta, the holding in the case being the familiar one that a corporate officer cannot
claim the privilege against self-incrimination to refuse to surrender corporate
records in his custody. Cf. Heike v. United States, 227 U.S. 131 (1913). Davis was
a search and seizure case and dealt with gasoline ration coupons which were government
property even though in private possession. See Shapiro, 335 U.S. at 36,
56–70 (Justice Frankfurter dissenting).
protection. It prohibits the prosecutorial authorities from using the
compelled testimony in any respect, and it therefore insures that
the testimony cannot lead to the infliction of criminal penalties on
the witness.’’ 239
Required Records Doctrine.—While the privilege is applicable
to an individual’s papers and effects, 240 it does not extend to
corporate persons, hence corporate records, as has been noted, are
subject to compelled production. 241 In fact, however, the Court has
greatly narrowed the protection afforded in this area to natural
persons by developing the ‘‘required records’’ doctrine. That is, it
has held ‘‘that the privilege which exists as to private papers cannot
be maintained in relation to ‘records required by law to be kept
in order that there may be suitable information of transactions
which are the appropriate subjects of governmental regulation and
the enforcement of restrictions validly established.’’’ 242 This exception
developed out of, as Justice Frankfurter showed in dissent, the
rule that documents which are part of the official records of government
are wholly outside the scope of the privilege; public records
are the property of government and are always accessible to inspection.
Because government requires certain records to be kept to facilitate
the regulation of the business being conducted, so the reasoning
goes, the records become public at least to the degree that
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AMENDMENT 5—RIGHTS OF PERSONS 1407
243 335 U.S. at 51.
244 335 U.S. at 32.
245 335 U.S. at 32
246 274 U.S. 259, 263, 264 (1927). Sullivan was reaffirmed in Garner v. United
States, 424 U.S. 648 (1976), holding that a taxpayer’s privilege against self-incrimination
was not violated when he failed to claim his privilege on his tax returns, and
instead gave incriminating information leading to conviction. One must assert one’s
privilege to alert the Government to the possibility that it is seeking to obtain incriminating
material. It is not coercion forbidden by the clause that upon a claim
of the privilege the Government could seek an indictment for failure to file, since
a valid claim of privilege cannot be the basis of a conviction. The taxpayer was not
entitled to a judicial ruling on the validity of his claim and an opportunity to reconsider
if the ruling went against him, irrespective of whether a good-faith erroneous
assertion of the privilege could subject him to prosecution, a question not resolved.
government could always scrutinize them without hindrance from
the record-keeper. ‘‘If records merely because required to be kept
by law ipso facto become public records, we are indeed living in
glass houses. Virtually every major public law enactment—to say
nothing of State and local legislation—has record-keeping provisions.
In addition to record-keeping requirements, is the network of
provisions for filing reports. Exhaustive efforts would be needed to
track down all the statutory authority, let alone the administrative
regulations, for record-keeping and reporting requirements. Unquestionably
they are enormous in volume.’’ 243
‘‘It may be assumed at the outset that there are limits which
the Government cannot constitutionally exceed in requiring the
keeping of records which may be inspected by an administrative
agency and may be used in prosecuting statutory violations committed
by the recordkeeper himself.’’ 244 But the only limit which
the Court suggested in Shapiro was that there must be ‘‘a sufficient
relation between the activity sought to be regulated and the
public concern so that the Government can constitutionally regulate
or forbid the basic activity concerned, and can constitutionally
require the keeping of particular records, subject to inspection by
the Administrator.’’ 245 That there are limits established by the selfincrimination
clause itself rather than by a subject matter jurisdiction
test is evident in the Court’s consideration of reporting and
disclosure requirements implicating but not directly involving the
required-records doctrine.
Reporting and Disclosure.—The line of cases begins with
United States v. Sullivan 246 in which a unanimous Court held that
the Fifth Amendment did not privilege a bootlegger in not filing an
income tax return because the filing would have disclosed the illegality
in which he was engaged. ‘‘It would be an extreme if not an
extravagant application of the Fifth Amendment to say that it authorized
a man to refuse to state the amount of his income because
it had been made in crime.’’ Justice Holmes stated for the Court.
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1408 AMENDMENT 5—RIGHTS OF PERSONS
247 The expansion of the commerce power would now obviate reliance on the taxing
power.
248 United States v. Kahriger, 345 U.S. 22 (1953); Lewis v. United States, 348
U.S. 419 (1955).
249 382 U.S. 70 (1965).
250 382 U.S. at 79. The decision was unanimous, Justice White not participating.
The same issue had been held not ripe for adjudication in Communist Party v.
SACB, 367 U.S. 1, 105–10 (1961).
251 Marchetti v. United States, 390 U.S. 39 (1968) (occupational tax); Grosso v.
United States, 390 U.S. 62 (1968) (wagering excise tax). In Haynes v. United States,
390 U.S. 85 (1968), the Court struck down a requirement that one register a firearm
that it was illegal to possess. The following Term on the same grounds the Court
voided a statute prohibiting the possession of marijuana without having paid a
transfer tax and registering. Leary v. United States, 395 U.S. 6 (1969); United
States v. Covington, 395 U.S. 57 (1969). However, a statute was upheld which prohibited
the sale of narcotics to a person who did not have a written order on a pre-
However, ‘‘[i]f the form of return provided called for answers that
the defendant was privileged from making he could have raised the
objection in the return . . . .’’ Utilizing its taxing power to reach
gambling activities over which it might not have had jurisdiction
otherwise, 247 Congress enacted a complicated statute imposing an
annual occupational tax on gamblers and an excise tax on all their
wages, and coupled the tax with an annual registration requirement
under which each gambler must file with the IRS a declaration
of his business with identification of his place of business and
his employees and agents, filings which were made available to
state and local law enforcement agencies. These requirements were
upheld by the Court against self-incrimination challenges on the
three grounds that (1) the privilege did not excuse a complete failure
to file, (2) since the threshold decision to gamble was voluntary,
the required disclosures were not compulsory, and (3) since
registration required disclosure only of prospective conduct, the
privilege, limited to past or present acts, did not apply. 248
Constitutional limitations appeared, however, in Albertson v.
SACB, 249 which struck down under the self-incrimination clause an
order pursuant to statute requiring registration by individual members
of the Communist Party or associated organizations. ‘‘In Sullivan
the questions in the income tax return were neutral on their
face and directed at the public at large, but here they are directed
at a highly selective group inherently suspect of criminal activities.
Petitioners’ claims are not asserted in an essentially noncriminal
and regulatory area of inquiry, but against an inquiry in an area
permeated with criminal statutes, where response to any of the
form’s questions in context might involve the petitioners in the admission
of a crucial element of a crime.’’ 250
The gambling tax reporting scheme was next struck down by
the Court. 251 Because of the pervasiveness of state laws prohibiting
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AMENDMENT 5—RIGHTS OF PERSONS 1409
scribed form, since the requirement caused the self-incrimination of the buyer but
not the seller, the Court viewing the statute as actually a flat proscription on sale
rather than a regulatory measure. Minor v. United States, 396 U.S. 87 (1969). The
congressional response was reenactment of the requirements coupled with use immunity.
United States v. Freed, 401 U.S. 601 (1971).
252 Marchetti v. United States, 390 U.S. 39, 48 (1968).
253 ‘‘Every element of these requirements would have served to incriminate petitioners;
to have required him to present his claim to Treasury officers would have
obliged him ‘to prove guilt to avoid admitting it.’’’ 390 U.S. at 50.
254 ‘‘The question is not whether petitioner holds a ‘right’ to violate state law,
but whether, having done so, he may be compelled to give evidence against himself.
The constitutional privilege was intended to shield the guilty and imprudent as well
as the innocent and foresighted; if such an inference of antecedent choice were alone
enough to abrogate the privilege’s protection, it would be excluded from the situations
in which it has historically been guaranteed, and withheld from those who
most require it.’’ 390 U.S. at 51. But cf. California v. Byers, 402 U.S. 424, 434 (1971)
(plurality opinion), in which it is suggested that because there is no ‘‘right’’ to leave
the scene of an accident a requirement that a person involved in an accident stop
and identify himself does not violate the self-incrimination clause.
255 Marchetti v. United States, 390 U.S. 39, 52–54 (1968). ‘‘The central standard
for the privilege’s application has been whether the claimant is confronted by substantial
and ‘real,’ and not merely trifling or imaginary, hazards of incrimination
. . . . This principle does not permit the rigid chronological distinctions adopted in
Kahriger and Lewis. We see no reason to suppose that the force of the constitutional
prohibition is diminished merely because confession of a guilty purpose precedes the
act which it is subsequently employed to evidence.’’ Id. at 53–54. Cf. United States
v. Freed, 401 U.S. 601, 605–07 (1971).
gambling, said Justice Harlan for the Court, ‘‘the obligations to register
and to pay the occupational tax created for petitioner ‘real
and appreciable,’ and not merely ‘imaginary and unsubstantial,’
hazards of self-incrimination.’’ 252 Overruling Kahriger and Lewis,
the Court rejected its earlier rationales. Registering per se would
have exposed a gambler to dangers of state prosecution, so Sullivan
did not apply. 253 Any contention that the voluntary engagement
in gambling ‘‘waived’’ the self-incrimination claim, because
there is ‘‘no constitutional right to gamble,’’ would nullify the privilege.
254 And the privilege was not governed by a ‘‘rigid chronological
distinction’’ so that it protected only past or present conduct,
but also reached future self-incrimination the danger of which is
not speculative and insubstantial. 255 Significantly, then, Justice
Harlan turned to distinguishing the statutory requirements here
from the ‘‘required records’’ doctrine of Shapiro. ‘‘First, petitioner
. . . was not . . . obliged to keep and preserve records ‘of the same
kind as he has customarily kept’; he was required simply to provide
information, unrelated to any records which he may have maintained,
about his wagering activities. This requirement is not significantly
different from a demand that he provide oral testimony
. . . . Second, whatever ‘public aspects’ there were to the records
at issue in Shapiro, there are none to the information demanded
from Marchetti. The Government’s anxiety to obtain information
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1410 AMENDMENT 5—RIGHTS OF PERSONS
256 Marchetti v. United States, 390 U.S. 39, 57 (1968).
257 402 U.S. 424 (1971)
258 402 U.S. at 427–31 (Chief Justice Burger and Justices Stewart, White, and
Blackmun).
259 ‘‘The California Supreme Court was surely correct in considering that the decisions
of this Court have made it clear that invocation of the privilege is not limited
to situations where the purpose of the inquiry is to get an incriminating answer .
. . . [I]t must be recognized that a reading of our more recent cases . . . suggests
the conclusion that the applicability of the privilege depends exclusively on a determination
that, from the individual’s point of view, there are ‘real’ and not ‘imagiknown
to a private individual does not without more render that
information public; if it did, no room would remain for the application
of the constitutional privilege. Nor does it stamp information
with a public character that the Government has formalized its demands
in the attire of a statute; if this alone were sufficient, the
constitutional privilege could be entirely abrogated by any Act of
Congress. Third, the requirements at issue in Shapiro were imposed
in ‘an essentially non-criminal and regulatory area of inquiry’
while those here are directed to a ‘selective group inherently
suspect of criminal activities.’ The United States’ principal interest
is evidently the collection of revenue, and not the punishment of
gamblers, . . . but the characteristics of the activities about which
information is sought, and the composition of the groups to which
inquiries are made, readily distinguish this situation from that in
Shapiro.’’ 256
Most recent of this line of cases is California v. Byers, 257 which
indicates that the Court has yet to settle on an ascertainable
standard for judging self-incrimination claims in cases where government
is asserting an interest other than criminal law enforcement.
Byers sustained the constitutionality of a statute which required
the driver of any automobile involved in an accident to stop
and give his name and address. The state court had held that a
driver who reasonably believed that compliance with the statute
would result in self-incrimination could refuse to comply. A plurality
of the Court, however, determined that Sullivan and Shapiro
applied and not the Albertson- Marchetti line of cases, because
the purpose of the statute was to promote the satisfaction of civil
liabilities resulting from automobile accidents and not criminal
prosecutions, and because the statute was directed to all drivers
and not to a group which was either ‘‘highly selective’’ or ‘‘inherently
suspect of criminal activities.’’ The combination of a noncriminal
motive with the general character of the requirement
made too slight for reliance the possibility of incrimination. 258 Justice
Harlan concurred to make up the majority on the disposition
of the case, disagreeing with the plurality’s conclusion that the stop
and identification requirement did not compel incrimination. 259
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AMENDMENT 5—RIGHTS OF PERSONS 1411
nary’ risks of self-incrimination in yielding to state compulsion. Thus, Marchetti and
Grosso . . . start from an assumption of a non-prosecutorial governmental purpose
in the decision to tax gambling revenues; those cases go on to apply what in another
context I have called the ‘real danger v. imaginary possibility standard . . . .’ A judicial
tribunal whose position with respect to the elaboration of constitutional doctrine
is subordinate to that of this Court certainly cannot be faulted for reading these
opinions as indicating that the ‘inherently-suspect-class’ factor is relevant only as
an indicium of genuine incriminating risk as assessed from the individual’s point
of view.’’ 402 U.S. at 437–38.
260 402 U.S. at 448–58. The four dissenters argued that it was unquestionable
that Byers would have faced real risks of self-incrimination by compliance with the
statute and that this risk was sufficient to invoke the privilege. Id. at 459, 464 (Justices
Black, Douglas, Brennan, and Marshall).
261 493 U.S. 549 (1990).
262 493 U.S. at 561. By the same token, the Court concluded that the targeted
group—persons who care for children pursuant to a juvenile court’s custody order—
is not a group ‘‘inherently suspect of criminal activities’’ in the Albertson-
Marchetti sense.
263 Bram v. United States, 168 U.S. 532, 542 (1897).
However, the Justice thought that where there is no governmental
purpose to enforce a criminal law and instead government is pursuing
other legitimate regulatory interests, it is permissible to
apply a balancing test between the government’s interest and the
individual’s interest. When he balanced the interests protected by
the Amendment—protection of privacy and maintenance of an
accusatorial system—with the noncriminal purpose, the necessity
for self-reporting as a means of securing information, and the nature
of the disclosures required, Justice Harlan voted to sustain the
statute. 260 Byers was applied in Baltimore Dep’t of Social Services
v. Bouknight 261 to uphold a juvenile court’s order that the mother
of a child under the court’s supervision produce the child. Although
in this case the mother was suspected of having abused or murdered
her child, the order was justified for ‘‘compelling reasons unrelated
to criminal law enforcement’’: concern for the child’s safety.
262 Moreover, because the mother had custody of her previously
abused child only as a result of the juvenile court’s order, the Court
analogized to the required records cases to conclude that the mother
had submitted to the requirements of the civil regulatory regime
as the child’s ‘‘custodian.’’
Confessions: Police Interrogation, Due Process, and Self-
Incrimination
‘‘In criminal trials, in the courts of the United States, wherever
a question arises whether a confession is incompetent because not
voluntary, the issue is controlled by that portion of the Fifth
Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, commanding
that no person ‘shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness
against himself.’’’ 263 This language in an 1897 case marked a
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1412 AMENDMENT 5—RIGHTS OF PERSONS
264 Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 (1966).
265 3 J. WIGMORE, A TREATISE ON THE ANGLO-AMERICAN SYSTEM OF EVIDENCE
§ 823, at 250 n.5 (3d ed. 1940); see also vol. 8 id. at § 2266 (McNaughton
rev. 1961). It appears that while the two rules did develop separately, they did stem
from some of the same considerations, and, in fact, the confession rule may be considered
in important respects to be an off-shoot of the privilege against self-incrimination.
See L. LEVY, ORIGINS OF THE FIFTH AMENDMENT—THE RIGHT AGAINST SELFINCRIMINATION
325–32, 495 n.43 (1968). See also Culombe v. Connecticut, 367 U.S.
568, 581–84, especially 583 n.25 (1961) (Justice Frankfurter announcing judgment
of the Court).
266 3 J. WIGMORE, A TREATISE ON THE ANGLO-AMERICAN SYSTEM OF EVIDENCE
§ 823 (3d ed. 1940); Developments in the Law—Confessions, 79 HARV. L.
REV. 935, 954–59 (1966).
sharp if unacknowledged break with the doctrine of previous cases
in which the Court had applied the common-law test of voluntariness
to determine the admissibility of confessions, and, while the
language was never expressly disavowed in subsequent cases, the
Court seems nevertheless to have proceeded along due process
standards rather than self-incrimination analysis. Because the selfincrimination
clause for most of this period was not applicable to
the States, the admissibility of confessions in state courts was determined
under due process standards developed from common-law
voluntariness principles. It was only after the Court extended the
self-incrimination clause to the States that a divided Court reaffirmed
and extended the 1897 ruling and imposed on both federal
and state trial courts new rules for admitting or excluding confessions
and other admissions made to police during custodial interrogation.
264 Though recent research tends to treat as oversimplified
Wigmore’s conclusion that ‘‘there never was any historical connection
. . . between the constitutional clause and the confession-doctrine,’’
265 the fact is that the contention, coupled with the inapplicability
of the self-incrimination clause to the States, was apparently
the basis until recently for the Supreme Court’s adjudication
of confession cases.
The Common Law Rule.—Not until the latter part of the
eighteenth century did courts develop a rule excluding coerced confessions
from admission at trial; prior to that time, even confessions
obtained by torture were admissible. As the rule developed in
England and in early United States jurisprudence, the rationale
was the unreliability of the confession’s contents when induced by
a promise of benefit or a threat of harm. 266 In its first decision on
the admissibility of confessions, the Court adopted the common-law
rule, stressing that while a ‘‘voluntary confession of guilt is among
the most effectual proofs in the law, from the very nature of such
evidence it must be subjected to careful scrutiny and received with
great caution.’’ ‘‘[T]he presumption upon which weight is given to
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AMENDMENT 5—RIGHTS OF PERSONS 1413
267 Hopt v. Utah, 110 U.S. 574, 584–85 (1884). Utah at this time was a territory
and subject to direct federal judicial supervision.
268 Pierce v. United States, 160 U.S. 335 (1896); Sparf v. United States, 156 U.S.
51 (1895). In Wilson v. United States, 162 U.S. 613 (1896), failure to provide counsel
or to warn the suspec
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