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293 Mich. 263

291 N.W 652

In Re Watson

Michigan Supreme Court

Decided April 19, 1940

Michigan Supreme Court · decided 1940-04-19

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1940-04-19

How this case has been cited

Cited by 17 later decisions (1 by the Supreme Court) — most recently September 1985

1 federal appellate · 15 state decisions

11019401950196019701980decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

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Wiest, J.

¶1 (dissenting). I am of the opinion that a person indicted for a felony may not be brought before the indicting authority and, upon tender of immunity prescribed by statute, be punished for contempt of court in refusing to answer a question relating to the subject matter of the indictment which he states, under oath, will tend to incriminate him. I note a distinction between an accused in custody under an indictment and a witness not under indictment.

¶2 Court-compelled self-incrimination has been abhorrent to English-speaking people for centuries and inhibited at common law, and this inheritance has been imbedded in the Constitution of the United *290 States and that of the State of Michigan. The Michigan statute, granting immunity from prosecution of a witness compelled to make self-incrimination, does not extend to the instant case.

¶3 The prisoner is not guilty of contempt of court and should be released from custody under such charge.

Sharpe and Chandler, JJ., concurred with Wiest, J.
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