in determining whether testimony of a witness who invokes the privilege during cross-examination may be used against defendant, court draws a distinction between cases in which the assertion of the privilege merely precludes inquiry into collateral matters that bear on credibility of witnesses and those in which assertion prevents inquiry into matters about which witness testified on direct
How later courts described this case
- in determining whether testimony of a witness who invokes the privilege during cross-examination may be used against defendant, court draws a distinction between cases in which the assertion of the privilege merely precludes inquiry into collateral matters that bear on credibility of witnesses and those in which assertion prevents inquiry into matters about which witness testified on direct
- reversing convictions when key witness invoked Fifth Amendment midstream and “[t]he answers solicited might have established untruthfulness with respect to specific events of the crime charged”
- "A witness of course does not, simply by testifying (and `putting his veracity in issue'
- “The effectiveness of such procedures after the testimony has been heard by the jury has been the subject of speculation, metaphysical and otherwise, by jurists and trial lawyers for generations.”
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
CLARK, Circuit Judge
(concurring in the result).
We seem generally unwilling to upset convictions when the Jencks Act, 18 U. S.C. § 3500, has not been scrupulously observed by the prosecution and the trial court. This tendency is disturbing. Several doctrinal devices have been developed to this end, such as that enunciated in United States v. Annunziato, 2 Cir., 293 F.2d 373, 382 , cert. denied Annunziato v. United States, 368 U.S. 919 , 82 S.Ct. 240 , 7 L.Ed.2d 134 , that it is only “harmless error” not to produce a statement which appears to “corroborate” a witness’s testimony, or in United States v. Simmons, 2 Cir., 281 F.2d 354, 357-358 , and the present case that the defense is not entitled to statements relating to purely incidental or collateral aspects of a witness’s testimony, or in United States v. Aviles, 2 Cir., 315 F.2d 186 , that the defense is not entitled to statements not sufficiently exact, though to the district judge “probably verbatim,” recitals of the witness’s oral statements. By employing one or more of these doctrinal devices the court is enabled to affirm an appealed conviction. Nevertheless this means that the speculation of the trial court is again being substituted for the judgment of defense counsel in assessing a statement’s worth as an aid to cross-examination. It is *617 this very evil which the Supreme Court has continually repudiated. See Scales v. United States, 367 U.S. 203, 258 , 81 S.Ct. 1469 , 6 L.Ed.2d 782 ; Palermo v. United States, 360 U.S. 343, 346 , 79 S.Ct. 1217 , 3 L.Ed.2d 1287 ; Jencks v. United States, 353 U.S. 657, 668-669 , 77 S.Ct. 1007 , 1 L.Ed.2d 1103 . But these doctrinal devices for achieving affirmance in the face of Jencks Act noncompliances are sufficiently entrenched that exception should not be made in individual cases and correction must come from the Supreme Court. Thus I reluctantly concur in the affirmances here noted. I concur in the reversals of the Harris and Kaminsky convictions and in the opinion so far as it relates to these matters.