Carter v. United States’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

1 district · 4 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 5 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “Judge Gallagher relies on United States v. Miranti, 253 F.2d 135, 139 (2d Cir.1958), and on a substantial number of other decisions from various jurisdictions, which would limit the trial judge's inquiry, in assessing a witness' Fifth Amendment claim, to the question whether prosecution of the witness would be legally possible (rather than reasonably possible). The claims of privilege in Miranti (and in most of the other cases relied on by Judge Gallagher) were asserted by witnesses whose testimony the government was seeking to compel, and not by prospective defense witnesses. There was thus no actual or potential collision between the rights of an accused under the Sixth Amendment and a witness' privilege against self-incrimination, and there was no occasion for the courts to attempt to balance or reconcile these basic constitutional protections. Cf. Wilson [ v. United States], 558 A.2d [1135], 1140 [(D.C.1989)] (because forced election between Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights is so painful, courts must attempt to preserve them both to a reasonable extent). A few courts have followed the analysis utilized in Miranti even where the privilege has been asserted by a defense witness whose testimony a criminal defendant has sought to compel. See, e.g., Commonwealth v. Francis, 375 Mass. 211 , 375 N.E.2d 1221, 1224-25 , cert. denied, 439 U.S. 872 , 99 S.Ct. 205 , 58 L.Ed.2d 185 (1978); In re Keijam T., 226 Conn. 497 , 628 A.2d 562, 565-66 (1993). In Francis , the court explicitly ”

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

2. “reject[ed] the defendant's contention that we should attempt to `balance' his rights under the Sixth Amendment against his [witness'] decision to invoke the Fifth Amendment.”

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

3. “we will not immunize [Craig Carter] in advance . . . without [eliciting] from the witness all the facts underlying the witness' alleged criminal activity.”

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