34
Opinion of the Court
pose a significant bar to his prosecution. App. 106-107. The case is not moot, however, because the agreement also provides for the entry of a guilty plea and a sentence that will not include incarceration if we should reverse and issue an opinion that is sufficiently favorable to the Government to satisfy that condition. Ibid. Despite that agreement, we granted the Independent Counsel's petition for a writ of certiorari in order to determine the precise scope of a grant of immunity with respect to the production of documents in response to a subpoena. 528 U. S. 926 (1999). We now affirm.
II
It is useful to preface our analysis of the constitutional issue with a restatement of certain propositions that are not in dispute. The term "privilege against self-incrimination" is not an entirely accurate description of a person's constitutional protection against being "compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself."
The word "witness" in the constitutional text limits the relevant category of compelled incriminating communications to those that are "testimonial" in character.8 As Justice Holmes observed, there is a significant difference between the use of compulsion to extort communications from a defendant and compelling a person to engage in conduct
8 "It is consistent with the history of and the policies underlying the Self-Incrimination Clause to hold that the privilege may be asserted only to resist compelled explicit or implicit disclosures of incriminating information. Historically, the privilege was intended to prevent the use of legal compulsion to extract from the accused a sworn communication of facts which would incriminate him. Such was the process of the ecclesiastical courts and the Star Chamber—the inquisitorial method of putting the accused upon his oath and compelling him to answer questions designed to uncover uncharged offenses, without evidence from another source. See Andresen v. Maryland, 427 U. S. 463, 470-471 (1976); 8 Wigmore § 2250; E. Griswold, The Fifth Amendment Today 2-3 (1955)." Doe v. United States, 487 U. S. 201, 212 (1988).
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