676
Opinion of the Court
case, we addressed the question whether a self-incrimination privilege could be invoked in the one jurisdiction based on fear of prosecution by the other, saying that "[w]e think the legal immunity is in regard to a prosecution in the same jurisdiction, and when that is fully given it is enough." Id., at 382. A year later, in the course of considering whether a federal witness, immunized from federal prosecution, could invoke the privilege based on fear of state prosecution, we adopted the general proposition that "the possibility that information given by the witness might be used" by the other government is, as a matter of law, "a danger so unsubstantial and remote" that it fails to trigger the right to invoke the privilege. Hale v. Henkel, 201 U. S. 43, 69 (1906).
"[I]f the argument were a sound one it might be carried still further and held to apply not only to state prosecutions within the same jurisdiction, but to prosecutions under the criminal laws of other States to which the witness might have subjected himself. The question has been fully considered in England, and the conclusion reached by the courts of that country [is] that the only danger to be considered is one arising within the same jurisdiction and under the same sovereignty. Queen v. Boyes, 1 B. & S. 311[, 121 Eng. Rep. 730]; King of the Two Sicilies v. Willcox, 7 State Trials (N. S.), 1049, 1068; State v. March, 1 Jones (N. Car.), 526; State v. Thomas, 98 N. Car. 599." Ibid.
A holding to this effect came when United States v. Mur-dock, 284 U. S. 141 (1931), "definitely settled" the question whether in a federal proceeding the privilege applied on account of fear of state prosecution, concluding "that one under examination in a federal tribunal could not refuse to answer on account of probable incrimination under state law." United States v. Murdock, 290 U. S. 389, 396 (1933).
"The English rule of evidence against compulsory self-incrimination, on which historically that contained in
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