Grosso v. United States/Concurrence Brennan

by William J. Brennan, Jr.

United States Supreme Court

390 U.S. 62

Grosso  v.  United States

Mr. Justice BRENNAN, concurring.

I join the opinions of the Court in these cases. I write only to emphasize why, in my view, nothing we decide or say today in any wise impairs or modifies United States v. Sullivan, 274 U.S. 259, 47 S.Ct. 607, 71 L.Ed. 1037, and Shapiro v. United States, 335 U.S. 1, 68 S.Ct. 1375, 92 L.Ed. 1787.

The privilege against self-incrimination does not bar the Government from establishing every program or scheme featured by provisions designed to secure information from citizens to accomplish proper legislative purposes. Congress is assuredly empowered to construct a statutory scheme which either is general enough to avoid conflict with the privilege, or which assures the necessary confidentiality or immunity to overcome the privilege. See Adams v. State of Maryland, 347 U.S. 179, 74 S.Ct. 442, 98 L.Ed. 608; Reina v. United States, 364 U.S. 507, 81 S.Ct. 260, 5 L.Ed.2d 249. True, some of the values protected by the self-incrimination guaranty may well be affected to an extent by any enforced system of information gathering based upon individual participation, see Murphy v. Waterfront Commission of New York Harbor, 378 U.S. 52, 55, 84 S.Ct. 1594, 1596, 12 L.Ed.2d 678, but it is clear that the scope of the privilege does not coincide with the complex of values it helps to protect. Despite the impact upon the inviolability of the human personality, and upon our belief in an adversary system of criminal justice in which the Government must produce the evidence against an accused through its own independent labors, the prosecution is allowed to obtain and use evidence offered by the accused 'in the unfettered exercise of his own will,' Malloy v. Hogan, 378 U.S. 1, 8, 84 S.Ct. 1489, 1493, 12 L.Ed.2d 653, and evidence which although compelled is generally speaking not 'testimonial,' Schmerber v. State of California, 384 U.S. 757, 761, 86 S.Ct. 1826, 1830, 16 L.Ed.2d 908. Moreover, by the simple expedient of granting appropriate immunity the Government is able to surmount entirely the self-incrimination barrier, despite the value of privacy that provision is intended to protect.

United States v. Sullivan, supra, makes clear that an individual is not exempted, by the fact that he may be privileged to refuse to answer some questions, from a requirement, 'directed at the public at large,' of filing an income tax return exclusively containing questions 'neutral on their face.' Albertson v. SACB, 382 U.S. 70, 79, 86 S.Ct. 194, 199, 15 L.Ed.2d 165. Shapiro v. United States, supra, involved a similar situation; it involved a record-keeping requirement pursuant to a neutral governmental system of price regulation.

On the other hand, we know that where the governmental scheme clearly evidences the purpose of gathering information from citizens in order to secure their conviction of crime, it contravenes the privilege. Thus in Albertson v. SACB, supra, we held invalid both the requirement that Communist Party members file a registration form and that they complete and file a registration statement under the Subversive Activities Control Act of 1950. We distinguished Sullivan stating that the questions on the forms in Albertson 'are directed at a highly selective group inherently suspect of criminal activities,' and that the privilege is asserted, not 'in an essentially noncriminal and regulatory area of inquiry, but against an inquiry in an area permeated with criminal statutes, where response to any of the form's questions in context might involve the petitioners in the admission of a crucial element of a crime.' Id., at 79, 86 S.Ct. at 199.

The cases before us present a statutory system condemned by Albertson. The wagering excise tax, the occupational tax, and the registration requirement are only parts of an interrelated statutory system for taxing illegal wagers. Whatever else Congress may have meant to achieve, an obvious purpose of this statutory system clearly was to coerce evidence from persons engaged in illegal activities for use in their prosecution. See United States v. Kahriger, 345 U.S. 22, 37, 73 S.Ct. 510, 517, 97 L.Ed. 754 (Frankfurter, J., dissenting).

The Court's opinions fully establish the statutory system's impermissible invasions of the privilege. Indeed, 26 U.S.C. § 4401 should create substantial suspicion on privilege grounds simply because it is an excise tax upon persons 'engaged in the business of accepting wagers' or who conduct 'any wagering pool or lottery.' The persons affected by this language are a relatively small group, many of whom are engaged in activities made unlawful by state and federal statutes. But § 4401 is actually even more directly confined to that group. Section 4402(1) exempts from the tax wagers placed with a parimutuel wagering enterprise 'licensed under State law,' and § 4421 defines 'wager' to exclude most forms of unorganized gambling such as dice and poker, and defines 'lottery' to exclude commonly played games such as bingo and drawings conducted by certain tax-exempt organizations. The effect of these exceptions is to limit the wagering excise tax under § 4401 almost exclusively to illegal, organized gambling.

Moreover, the code contemplates extensive record-keeping reporting by persons obligated to pay the tax. But these are records and reports which would criminate overwhelmingly. Section 6011(a) requires any person liable to pay a tax to file a return in accordance with the forms and regulations promulgated by the Secretary or his delegate. The regulations promulgating recordkeeping requirements and the requirement that taxpayers make a monthly return on Form 730, Treas. Reg. § 44.6011(a)-1(a), were therefore formulated pursuant to specific congressional authority. That the return is intended to be a part of the wagering tax obligation is clear from the face of the return itself. Immediately under Form 730's title 'TAX ON WAGERING' is a reference to '(Section 4401 of the Internal Revenue Code),' and in at least three places the return indicates that 'this form must be filed, with remittance, with the District Director of Internal Revenue.' (Emphasis added.)

Thus § 4401 requires that taxpayers send the Government every month both the tax due and the completed Form 730. That much can start them on the road to prison. The Service then is free to take various steps to assure that it does. It may investigate such taxpayers. It may subpoena taxpayers' records to ascertain whether the payments are accurate. It can and does pass on for use by prosecuting authorities the facts of payments and filing and any other evidence uncovered. These many, substantial dangers easily satisfy the test for incrimination fashioned by our cases.

Of course the privilege does not guarantee anonymity. The question in these cases, however, is not whether all governmental programs which require citizens to expose their identity are invalid, but whether this statutory system, designed primarily for and utilized to pierce the anonymity of citizens engaged in criminal activity, is invalid. The privilege does guarantee anonymity from inquiries so designed, when the risks are not wholly fanciful. And the risks here are obvious and real. A list of persons who comply with § 4401 every month is invaluable to prosecuting authorities. It must frequently provide the clinching link in the chain of conviction.

We must take this statute as it is written and as it has been applied. Both the statute and the practice under it clearly further a congressional purpose to gather evidence from citizens in order to secure their conviction of crime. There undoubtedly will be other statutes and practices as to which this determination will be more difficult to make. These cases, however, present a statutory system manifesting a patent violation of the privilege. That system must be dealt with uncompromisingly to protect against encroachment of the privilege and to encourage legislative care and concern for its continuing vitality.

Notes