768
Opinion of Thomas, J.
jury, on pain of contempt, so long as the witness is not the target of the criminal case in which he testifies. See Minnesota v. Murphy, 465 U. S. 420, 427 (1984); Kastigar v. United States, 406 U. S. 441, 443 (1972). Even for persons who have a legitimate fear that their statements may subject them to criminal prosecution, we have long permitted the compulsion of incriminating testimony so long as those statements (or evidence derived from those statements) cannot be used against the speaker in any criminal case. See Brown v. Walker, 161 U. S. 591, 602-604 (1896); Kastigar, supra, at 458; United States v. Balsys, 524 U. S. 666, 671-672 (1998). We have also recognized that governments may penalize public employees and government contractors (with the loss of their jobs or government contracts) to induce them to respond to inquiries, so long as the answers elicited (and their fruits) are immunized from use in any criminal case against the speaker. See Lefkowitz v. Turley, 414 U. S. 70, 84-85 (1973) ("[T]he State may insist that [contractors] . . . either respond to relevant inquiries about the performance of their contracts or suffer cancellation"); Lefkowitz v. Cunningham, 431 U. S. 801, 806 (1977) ("Public employees may constitutionally be discharged for refusing to answer potentially incriminating questions concerning their official duties if they have not been required to surrender their constitutional immunity" against later use of statements in criminal proceedings).2 By contrast, no "penalty" may ever be imposed on
2 The government may not, however, penalize public employees and government contractors to induce them to waive their immunity from the use of their compelled statements in subsequent criminal proceedings. See Uniformed Sanitation Men Assn., Inc. v. Commissioner of Sanitation of City of New York, 392 U. S. 280 (1968); Lefkowitz v. Turley, 414 U. S. 70 (1973), and this is true even though immunity is not itself a right secured by the text of the Self-Incrimination Clause, but rather a prophylactic rule we have constructed to protect the Fifth Amendment's right from invasion. See Part II-A-3, infra. Once an immunity waiver is signed, the signatory is unable to assert a Fifth Amendment objection to the subsequent use of his statements in a criminal case, even if his statements were
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