286
Opinion of the Court
of the right to pursue clemency on his waiver of the right to remain silent. While the Court of Appeals accepted respondent's rubric of "unconstitutional conditions," we find it unnecessary to address it in deciding this case. In our opinion, the procedures of the Authority do not under any view violate the Fifth Amendment privilege.
The Fifth Amendment protects against compelled self-incrimination. See Baxter v. Palmigiano, 425 U. S. 308, 316-318 (1976). The record itself does not tell us what, if any, use is made by the board of the clemency interview, or of an inmate's refusal to answer questions posed to him at that interview. But the Authority in its brief dispels much of the uncertainty:
"Nothing in the procedure grants clemency applicants immunity for what they might say or makes the interview in any way confidential. Ohio has permissibly chosen not to allow the inmate to say one thing in the interview and another in a habeas petition, and no amount of discovery will alter this feature of the procedure." Reply Brief for Petitioners 6.
Assuming also that the Authority will draw adverse inferences from respondent's refusal to answer questions—which it may do in a civil proceeding without offending the Fifth Amendment, Palmigiano, supra, at 316-318—we do not think that respondent's testimony at a clemency interview would be "compelled" within the meaning of the Fifth Amendment. It is difficult to see how a voluntary interview could "compel" respondent to speak. He merely faces a choice quite similar to the sorts of choices that a criminal defendant must make in the course of criminal proceedings, none of which has ever been held to violate the Fifth Amendment.
Long ago we held that a defendant who took the stand in his own defense could not claim the privilege against self-incrimination when the prosecution sought to cross-examine
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