United States v. Balsys, 524 U.S. 666, 15 (1998)

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680

UNITED STATES v. BALSYS

Opinion of the Court

Bank were later, of course, superseded by Murdock with its unequivocal holding that prosecution in a state jurisdiction not bound by the Clause is beyond the purview of the privilege.

C

In 1964, our precedent took a turn away from the unqualified proposition that fear of prosecution outside the jurisdiction seeking to compel testimony did not implicate a Fifth or Fourteenth Amendment privilege, as the case might be. In Murphy v. Waterfront Comm'n of N. Y. Harbor, 378 U. S. 52 (1964), we reconsidered the converse of the situation in Murdock, whether a witness in a state proceeding who had been granted immunity from state prosecution could invoke the privilege based on fear of prosecution on federal charges. In the course of enquiring into a work stoppage at several New Jersey piers, the Waterfront Commission of New York Harbor subpoenaed the defendants, who were given immunity from prosecution under the laws of New Jersey and New York. When the witnesses persisted in refusing to testify based on their fear of federal prosecution, they were held in civil contempt, and the order was affirmed by New Jersey's highest court. In re Application of the Waterfront Comm'n of N. Y. Harbor, 39 N. J. 436, 449, 189 A. 2d 36, 44 (1963). This Court held the defendants could be forced to testify not because fear of federal prosecution was irrelevant but because the Self-Incrimination Clause barred the National Government from using their state testimony or its fruits to obtain a federal conviction. We explained that "the constitutional privilege against self-incrimination protects a state witness against incrimination under federal as well as state law and a federal witness against incrimination under state as well as federal law." 378 U. S., at 77-78.

Murphy is a case invested with two alternative rationales. Under the first, the result reached in Murphy was undoubtedly correct, given the decision rendered that very same day in Malloy v. Hogan, 378 U. S. 1 (1964), which applied the

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