No. 27,305. | Minn. | Jan 25, 1929
Relator's claim of the privilege of secrecy is made under the mandate of art.
"No person shall be excused from attending and testifying before any court or magistrate upon an investigation, proceeding or trial for a violation of any of the provisions of this act upon the ground, or for the reason that the testimony or evidence, documentary or otherwise, required of him may tend to convict him of a crime or subject him to a penalty or forfeiture, but no person shall be prosecuted, or subjected to any penalty or forfeiture for, or on account of any transaction, matter or thing concerning which he may so testify or produce evidence, documentary or otherwise, and no testimony so given or produced shall be received against him upon any criminal investigation or proceeding."
The issue thus raised seems never before to have been presented to this court, but by an overwhelming weight of authority elsewhere it is settled in favor of the state. The constitutional provision against compulsory self-incrimination, while varying slightly in form, is found in the bills of rights of all of the state constitutions and in the fifth amendment to the constitution of the United States. Its meaning, as determined in the light of its origin and history, is not in doubt. The purpose is common to all American constitutions, so that there is not only manifest propriety in adopting the settled view of the Supreme Court of the United States but, in the interest of the uniformity and symmetry of our constitutional law, a compelling need for doing so. Fortunately the question has been definitely settled by that tribunal.
Under the original "act to regulate commerce," approved February 4, 1887, c. 104 (24 St. L. 379), testimony was once sought from a reluctant witness before the interstate commerce commission notwithstanding his claim of the privilege of secrecy. Section 860 of the Revised Statutes then provided that disclosures by a party or witness made "by means of a judicial proceeding" should not "be *310
given in evidence, or in any manner used against him or his property or estate, in any court of the United States, in any criminal proceeding, or for the enforcement of any penalty or forfeiture." In Counselman v. Hitchcock,
Later the act of congress was amended so as to exempt a witness from prosecution on account of any transaction to which he might testify before the interstate commerce commission, and it was held in Brown v. Walker,
The ancient principle of the English law of evidence, now written into our bill of rights, is that "a witness shall not be compelled, in any proceeding, to make disclosures or to give testimony which will tend to criminate him or subject him to fines, penalties or forfeitures." [
Under such statutes, the witness is "secured against all liability to future prosecution as effectually as if he were wholly innocent. * * * The conditional exemption becomes absolute when the witness testifies; and, being no longer liable to prosecution, he is not compelled, by testifying, to accuse or furnish evidence against himself. * * * The legal protection of the witness against prosecution for crime disclosed by him is, in law, equivalent to his legal innocence of the crime disclosed. * * * The witness, regarded in law as innocent if prosecuted for a crime which he has been compelled by the statute to disclose, will stand as well as other innocent persons; and it was not the design of the common law maxim, affirmed by the Bill of Rights, that he should stand any better." State v. Nowell,
Brown v. Walker is authority also for the conclusion that the bare possibility that a witness, by a disclosure compelled under the statute in question, may be subjected to the criminal laws of some other state or of the federal government or that he may be put to the annoyance and expense of pleading and proving his immunity should a subsequent prosecution be attempted, does not make the *312 statutory immunity insufficient to satisfy the constitutional prohibition against compulsory self-incrimination. For other authorities, see 28 R.C.L. 440, and 40 Cyc. 2543.
Judgment affirmed.