Cite as: 530 U. S. 27 (2000)
Opinion of the Court
that may be incriminating.9 Thus, even though the act may provide incriminating evidence, a criminal suspect may be compelled to put on a shirt,10 to provide a blood sample 11 or handwriting exemplar,12 or to make a recording of his voice.13 The act of exhibiting such physical characteristics is not the same as a sworn communication by a witness that relates either express or implied assertions of fact or belief. Pennsylvania v. Muniz, 496 U. S. 582, 594-598 (1990). Similarly, the fact that incriminating evidence may be the byproduct of obedience to a regulatory requirement, such as filing an income tax return,14 maintaining required records,15 or reporting an accident,16 does not clothe such required conduct with the testimonial privilege.17
More relevant to this case is the settled proposition that a person may be required to produce specific documents even though they contain incriminating assertions of fact or belief because the creation of those documents was not "compelled"
9 "A question arose as to whether a blouse belonged to the prisoner. A witness testified that the prisoner put it on and it fitted him. It is objected that he did this under the same duress that made his statements inadmissible, and that it should be excluded for the same reasons. But the prohibition of compelling a man in a criminal court to be witness against himself is a prohibition of the use of physical or moral compulsion to extort communications from him, not an exclusion of his body as evidence when it may be material. The objection in principle would forbid a jury to look at a prisoner and compare his features with a photograph in proof." Holt v. United States, 218 U. S. 245, 252-253 (1910).
10 Ibid.
11 Schmerber v. California, 384 U. S. 757 (1966).
12 Gilbert v. California, 388 U. S. 263 (1967).
13 United States v. Wade, 388 U. S. 218 (1967).
14 United States v. Sullivan, 274 U. S. 259 (1927).
15 Shapiro v. United States, 335 U. S. 1 (1948).
16 California v. Byers, 402 U. S. 424 (1971).
17 "The Court has on several occasions recognized that the Fifth Amendment privilege may not be invoked to resist compliance with a regulatory regime constructed to effect the State's public purposes unrelated to the enforcement of its criminal laws." Baltimore City Dept. of Social Servs. v. Bouknight, 493 U. S. 549, 556 (1990).
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