noting that “where competing constitutional rights are asserted, it is the trial court’s responsibility to avoid a conflict between them and to accommodate all of them, if at all possible,” and that “all the participants at trial, under the guidance of the trial court, must actively attempt to find means around the problem.”
How later courts described this case
- noting that “where competing constitutional rights are asserted, it is the trial court’s responsibility to avoid a conflict between them and to accommodate all of them, if at all possible,” and that “all the participants at trial, under the guidance of the trial court, must actively attempt to find means around the problem.”
- admonishing, on remand, that “trial court . . . be acutely aware that the exclusive constitutional authority to execute the laws and decide whom to prosecute lies in the executive branch,” and that “[i]t is not for the judiciary to intrude into this prosecutorial function”
- reciting that “defendant must first establish to the trial court’s satisfaction that the proposed testimony is (a) material, (b) clearly exculpatory, (c) non-cumulative, and (d) unobtainable from any other source”
- requiring that request for immunity be made pre-trial; “[o]nly for good cause shown should this pre-trial procedural requirement be altered”
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
TERRY, Associate Judge,
concurring:
As I read what Judge Gallagher has written, he is not saying that the trial court has the power to grant immunity to a witness over the objection of the prosecution. Indeed, he could not, for the Supreme Court has made it absolutely clear that “[n]o court has authority to immunize a witness.” Pittsburg Co. v. Conboy, 459 U.S. 248, 261 , 103 S.Ct. 608, 616 , 74 L.Ed.2d 430 (1983). Unwavering case law in the District of Columbia is to the same effect. See, e.g., Taylor v. United States, 603 A.2d 451, 460 (D.C.) (citing cases), cert. denied, 506 U.S. 852 , 113 S.Ct. 155 , 121 L.Ed.2d 105 (1992); United States v. Lugg, 282 U.S.App. D.C. 85, 88, 892 F.2d 101, 104 (1989) (recognizing the “universal rule” that only the executive branch has the power to grant immunity and holding that the trial court “had no power” to do so). With that understanding, I join in the court’s opinion.