Piemonte v. United States’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

183 federal appellate · 42 state decisions

Most-quoted passages

The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 342 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““If two persons witness an offense— one being an innocent bystander and the other an accomplice who is thereafter imprisoned for his participation — the latter has no more right to keep silent than the former. The Government of course has an obligation to protect its citizens from harm. But fear of reprisal offers an immunized prisoner no more dispensation from testifying than it does any innocent bystander without a record.” Piemonte v. United States, 367 U.S. 556 , 559, n.2, 81 S.Ct. 1720 ,1722, n.2, 6 L.Ed.2d 1028 .”

   9 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissent
   e.g. United States v. Housand · United States v. Johnson

2. ““Once an indictment was returned, the proceedings of this grand jury became a part of a criminal prosecution directed against petitioner. Counselman v. Hitchcock, 142 U.S. 547 , 562, [ 12 S.Ct. 195 , 35 L.Ed. 1110 ]; United States v. Monia, 317 U.S. 424 , 427 [ 63 S.Ct. 409 , 87 L.Ed. 376 ]. When the citizen is formally accused by indictment, he has a constitutional right to stand mute and to refuse to testify. His right not to take the stand in a federal criminal trial transcends his privilege against self-incrimination. No immunity statute, no pressure of government, no threats of the prosecution can be used to deprive the citizen of this right. See Wilson v. United States, 149 U.S. 60 [ 13 S.Ct. 765 , 37 L.Ed. 650 ]; Stewart v. United States, 366 U.S. 1 [ 81 S.Ct. 941 , 6 L.Ed.2d 84 ]. And it is unthinkable that a district judge would ever hold a defendant in contempt because he refused to take the stand at his own trial. The district judge did no such thing here. But that was the posture of the case when it was decided by the Court of Appeals. For by then the matters about which the petitioner refused to answer had become in form and in effect an indictment against him. “There is no power in our free society to compel a person to talk about a matter on which he has been indicted or to penalize him for failure to do so. We might as well say that an accused can be committed for contempt for failure to take the stand at his own trial. “We are advised that after we granted ce”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the dissent
   e.g. United States v. Testa

3. “In my opinion, the Government has subjected the petitioner to unjustifiable harassment. The petitioner has been convicted for his admittedly illegal conduct and is presently paying his debt to society for that conduct. However, not being satisfied with this punishment, the Government sought to extract from the petitioner, under the threat of a contempt conviction, testimony which it could not have compelled at the original trial in 1958, and which it knows might well endanger petitioner’s life and the lives of his loved ones. In my view, the Government’s attempt to compel the petitioner to testify about conduct for which he has already been punished, and the District Court’s imposition of an additional term in the penitentiary for petitioner’s refusal to testify about such conduct represents the type of harassment which violates the spirit of the Double Jeopardy Clause of the Fifth Amendment. * * * I think it can fairly be said that the treatment which the petitioner has received from the Government and the District Court falls far short of that fundamental fairness which the Constitution guarantees and to which even the basest prisoner in the penitentiary is entitled. * * *”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the dissent
   e.g. Martin v. United States