Hutcheson v. United States/Opinion of the Court

After a trial without a jury, petitioner was found guilty on all 18 counts of an indictment charging him with having violated 2 U.S.C. § 192, 2 U.S.C.A. § 192, by refusing to answer pertinent questions put to him on June 27, 1958, by the Senate Select Committee on Improper Activities in the Labor or Management Field, commonly known as the McClellan Committee. He was sentenced to six months' imprisonment and fined $500. The judgment was affirmed by the Court of Appeals, without opinion. We granted certiorari to consider petitioner's constitutional challenges to his conviction. 365 U.S. 866, 81 S.Ct. 902, 5 L.Ed.2d 858.

The McClellan Committee was established by the Senate in

'to conduct an investigation and study of the extent to which     criminal or other improper practices or activities are, or      have been, engaged in in the field of labor-management      relations or in groups or organizations of employees or employers to the detriment of the      interests of the public, employers or employees, and to      determine whether any changes are required in the laws of the      United States in order to protect such interests against the      occurrence of such practices or activities.' S.Res. 74, 85th     Cong., 1st Sess. (1957).

Pursuing an investigation pattern which in 1957 and the forepart of 1958 had disclosed misuse of union funds for the personal benefit of various union officials, the Committee on June 4, 1958, began hearings at Washington, D.C., into the affairs of various organizations, including the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America of which the petitioner was president. Initially, the Committee sought to inquire into the personal financial interests of petitioner and other officials of the Carpenters Union in the World Wide Press, a New York publishing house owned by one Maxwell Raddock, which was publisher of the 'Trade Union Courier.' More especially the Committee wished to learn whether union funds had been misused in the publication by the Press of a biography of petitioner's father, entitled 'The Portrait of an American Labor Leader, William L. Hutcheson.' Senator McClellan, Chairman of the Committee, announced that the petitioner and Raddock would both be called to testify.

On June 25 Raddock testified as to the affairs of the 'Trade Union Courier' and the publication of the Hutcheson book. On the following day, however, he claimed the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination with respect to another matter to which the Committee had turned. That matter related to the possible use of union funds or influence to 'fix' a 1957 criminal investigation, conducted in Lake County, Indiana, by a state grand jury, into an alleged scheme to defraud the State of Indiana, in which petitioner and two other officials of the Carpenters Union, O. William Blaier and Frank M. Chapman, were allegedly implicated.

The alleged scheme to defraud had been revealed in testimony given before a Subcommittee of the Senate Committee on Public Works during May and June 1957. That testimony had disclosed that in June 1956 the petitioner, Blaier, and Chapman had together bought, in their individual capacities, certain real property in Lake County for $20,000, and had shortly thereafter sold it, at a profit of $78,000, to the State of Indiana for highway construction purposes, pursuant to an agreement whereby a deputy in the Indiana Right-of-Way Department was paid one-fifth of that profit. The ensuing grand jury proceeding had been terminated in August 1957 without any indictment having been found, with an announcement by the county prosecutor, Metro Holovachka, that 'jurisdiction' over the matter was lacking in Lake County, and that the entire $78,000 profit had been returned to the State. Thereafter, in February 1958, the petitioner, Blaier, and Chapman were indicted in adjoining Marion County on this transaction.

It is apparent from the questioning of Raddock by the chief counsel for the McClellan Committee that the Committee had information indicating that Raddock, the petitioner, Blaier, and several officials of the Teamsters Union had been involved in a plan whereby Holovachka had been induced to drop the Lake County grand jury investigation, and Committee counsel explained to Raddock that the Committee was interested to learn whether union funds or influence had been used for that purpose.

In addition to Raddock, whose self-incrimination plea with respect to all questions relating to that episode was respected by the Committee, Blaier, and two witnesses connected with an Indiana Local of the Teamsters Union, Michael Sawochka its secretary-treasurer and Joseph P. Sullivan its attorney, were also examined before the Committee on June 26. Sawochka and Sullivan each refused to answer any questions relating to the termination of the Lake County grand jury proceedings, Sawochka basing his refusal on the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination, and Sullivan invoking the attorney-client privilege insofar as the questions related to any discussions with Sawochka. Both claims were honored by the Committee.

Blaier, who was asked no questions regarding the Lake County real estate transaction itself, refused to answer the question whether he had made 'any arrangements for Mr. Max Raddock to fix any case for you in Indiana.' He asserted that the question 'relates solely to a personal matter, not pertinent to any activity which this committee is authorized to investigate and * *  * it might aid the prosecution in the case in which I am under indictment.' The Committee Chairman, without ruling on the objection, stated that the witness might claim the privilege against self-incrimination. Although Blaier did not thereafter do so, he was never directed by the Committee to answer this question.

The last witness who was examined by the Committee on this phase of its investigation was the petitioner, who was called on June 27. He answered questions concerning the publication by Raddock of the biography of petitioner's father, commissioned by the Carpenters Union at a total expense of $310,000. When the inquiry turned to the subject of the Lake County grand jury investigation, however, petitioner refused to answer any questions. Being under the same indictment as Blaier and represented by the same counsel, petitioner's grounds for refusal were the same as those which had been advanced the day before by Blaier: 'it (the question) relates solely to a personal matter, not pertinent to any activity which this committee is authorized to investigate, and also it relates or might be claimed to relate to or aid the prosecution in the case in which I am under indictment and thus be in denial of due process of law.' No claim of the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination was made at any stage. This objection, upon which the petitioner stood throughout this phase of his interrogation, was overruled by the Committee, and petitioner was directed, and refused to answer, each of the 18 questions constituting the subject matter of the indictment upon which he has been convicted.

The many arguments now made to us in support of reversal are reducible to two constitutional challenges. First, it is contended that questioning petitioner on any matters germane to the state criminal charges then pending against him was offensive to the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment. Second, it is argued that the Committee invaded domains constitutionally reserved to the Executive and the Judiciary, in that its inquiry was simply aimed at petitioner's 'exposure' and served no legislative purpose. For reasons now to be discussed we decide that neither challenge is availing.

Due Process.

The Committee's interrogation is said to have been fundamentally unfair in two respects: (1) it placed the petitioner in a position where, save for silence, his only choice lay between prejudicing his defense to the state indictment, and committing perjury; and (2) it was a 'pretrial' of the state charges before the Committee. The first of these propositions rests on two premises respecting Indiana law, which we accept for the purposes of the ensuing discussion: admissions of an attempt to 'fix' the grand jury investigation could have been used against petitioner in the state trial as evidence of consciousness of guilt (see, e.g., Davidson v. State, 205 Ind. 564, 569, 187 N.E. 376, 378); a claim of the federal selfincrimination privilege before that Committee could also have been so used, at least to impeach petitioner's testimony had he taken the stand at the state trial (see Crickmore v. State, 213 Ind. 586, 592-593, 12 N.E.2d 266, 269).

The contention respecting Indiana's future use of incriminatory answers at once encounters an obstacle in Hale v. Henkel, 201 U.S. 43, 26 S.Ct. 370, 50 L.Ed. 652, and United States v. Murdock, 284 U.S. 141, 52 S.Ct. 63, 76 L.Ed. 210. Those cases establish that possible self-incrimination under state law is not a ground for refusing to answer questions in a federal inquiry; accordingly, the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination will not avail one so circumstanced. Manifestly, this constitutional doctrine is no less relevant here either because the petition was actually under, and not merely threatened with, state indictment at the time of his appearance before the Committee, or because of the likelihood that the Committee would have respected, even though not required to do so under existing law, a privilege claim had one been made.

Recognizing this obstacle, petitioner asks us to overrule Hale and Murdock, asserting that both decisions rested on misapprehensions as to earlier American and English law. But we need not consider those contentions, for petitioner never having claimed the Fifth Amendment privilege before the Committee, this aspect of his due process challenge is not open to him now. This is not a case like Quinn v. United States, 349 U.S. 155, 75 S.Ct. 668, 99 L.Ed. 964, or Emspak v. United States, 349 U.S. 190, 75 S.Ct. 687, 99 L.Ed. 997, where there is doubt whether that privilege was invoked by the witness. 'If,' as was noted in Emspak, 349 U.S. at 195, 75 S.Ct. at 691, 'the witness intelligently and unequivocally waives any objection based on the Self-Incrimination Clause, or if the witness refuses a committee request to state whether he relies on the Self-Incrimination Clause, he cannot later invoke its protection in a prosecution for contempt for refusing to answer that question.' In this instance, the petitioner, with counsel at his side, unequivocally and repeatedly disclaimed any reliance on the Fifth Amendment privilege.

Petitioner cannot escape the effect of his waiver by arguing, as he does, that his refusals to answer were based on 'due process' grounds, and not upon a claim of 'privilege.' We agree, of course, that a congressional committee's right to inquire is 'subject to' all relevant 'limitations placed by the Constitution on governmental action,' including 'the relevant limitations of the Bill of Rights,' Barenblatt v. United States, 360 U.S. 109, 112, 79 S.Ct. 1081, 1085, 3 L.Ed.2d 1115; that such limitations go beyond the protection of the self-incrimination clause of the Fifth Amendment, id., 111-112, 79 S.Ct. 1085, and that nonreliance on one such limitation does not preclude reliance on another. But it is surely equally clear that where, as here, the validity of a particular constitutional objection depends in part on the availability of another, both must be adequately raised before the inquiring committee if the former is to be fully preserved for review in this Court.

To hold otherwise would enable a witness to toy with a congressional committee in a manner obnoxious to the rule that such committees are entitled to be clearly apprised of the grounds on which a witness asserts a right of refusal to answer. Emspak v. United States, supra, 349 U.S. at 195, 75 S.Ct. at 691; cf. Barenblatt v. United States, supra, 360 U.S. at 123-124, 79 S.Ct. at 1091. The present case indeed furnishes an apt illustration of this. Pursuant to its policy of respecting Fifth Amendment privilege claims with respect to 'state' self-incrimination (even though with Hale and Murdock still on the books it need not have done so), the Committee was at pains to discover whether petitioner's due process objection included a privilege claim. Had he made such a claim, there is little doubt but that the Committee would have honored it. It was only after petitioner's express disclaimer of the privilege that the Committee proceeded to disallow his due process objection. Now to consider that the self-incrimination aspect of petitioner's due process claim is still open to him would in effect require us to say that, despite petitioner's unequivocal disclaimer, the Committee should nonetheless have taken his due process objection as subsuming also a privilege claim. We cannot so consider the situation.

We also find untenable the contention that possible use in the state trial of a claim of the federal privilege against self-incrimination either excused petitioner from asserting it before the Committee or furnishes independent support for his due process challenge. Whether or not, as is intimated by the Government, but, for obvious reasons, not by the petitioner, the State's use of such a claim directly or for impeachment purposes might be preventable, need not now be considered. For if such a proposition is arguable in the face of Twining v. New Jersey, 211 U.S. 78, 29 S.Ct. 14, 53 L.Ed. 97, and Adamson v. California, 332 U.S. 46, 51, 67 S.Ct. 1672, 1675, 91 L.Ed. 1903, let alone Knapp v. Schweitzer, 357 U.S. 371, 78 S.Ct. 1302, 2 L.Ed.2d 1393; Feldman v. United States, 322 U.S. 487, 64 S.Ct. 1082, 88 L.Ed. 1408; Hale v. Henkel, supra, and United States v. Murdock, supra, its consideration should in any event await another day. The appropriate time for that, had the petitioner in this instance claimed the privilege before the Committee, would have been upon review of his state conviction, when we would have known exactly what use, if any, the State had made of the federal claim. To thwart the exercise of legitimate congressional power, on the basis of conjecture that a State may later abuse an individual's reliance upon federally assured rights, would require of us a constitutional adjudication contrary to well-established principles of ripeness and justiciability. Cf. United Public Workers v. Mitchell, 330 U.S. 75, 89-90, 67 S.Ct. 556, 91 L.Ed. 754.

There remains for discussion on the due process challenge, the contention that the Committee's inquiry was a 'pretrial' of the state indictment. Insofar as this proposition suggests that the congressional inquiry infected the later state proceedings, the answer to it is found in what we have just said respecting the contention that a claim of self-incrimination before the Committee could have been used in the state proceedings. If the Committee's public hearings rendered petitioner's state trial unfair, such a challenge should not be dealt with at this juncture. The proper time for its consideration would be on review of the state conviction. To determine it now would require us to pass upon the claim in the dark, since we are entirely ignorant of what transpired at the state trial.

Nor can it be argued that the mere pendency of the state indictment ipso facto constitutionally closed this avenue of interrogation to the Committee. 'It may be conceded that Congress is without authority to compel disclosures for the purpose of aiding the prosecution of pending suits; but the authority of that body, directly or through its committees, to require pertinent disclosures in aid of its own constitutional power is not abridged because the information sought to be elicited may also be of use in such suits.' Sinclair v. United States, 279 U.S. 263, 295, 49 S.Ct. 268, 272, 73 L.Ed. 692. It would be absurd to suggest that in establishing this committee the Congress was actuated by a purpose to aid state prosecutions, still less that of this particular individual. The pertinency of the observation in Sinclair is not lessened by the circumstance that in this instance the state proceeding involved was criminal, rather than civil. Cf. Delaney v. United States, 1 Cir., 199 F.2d 107, 114.

Exposure.

There is also no merit to petitioner's contention that the Committee undertook simply 'to expose' petitioner 'for the sake of exposure,' Watkins v. United States, 354 U.S. 178, 200, 77 S.Ct. 1173, 1185, 1 L.Ed.2d 1273. The origins of the McClellan Committee, and the products of its endeavors, both belie that challenge, and nothing in the record of the present hearings points to a contrary conclusion.

It cannot be gainsaid that legislation, whether civil or criminal, in the labor-management field is within the competence of Congress under its power to regulate interstate commerce. The Committee's general legislative recommendations, made at the conclusion of its First Interim Report, S.Rep.No.1417, 85th Cong., 2d Sess. 450-453 (1958), were embodied in two remedial statutes enacted by Congress: the Welfare and Pension Plans Disclosure Act of 1958, 72 Stat. 997, 29 U.S.C.A. § 301 et seq., and the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act of 1959, 73 Stat. 519, 29 U.S.C.A. § 401 et seq. The enactment of the first of these statutes is attributable primarily to the findings and recommendations of several Subcommittees of the Senate Committee on Labor and Public Welfare, S.Rep.No.1440, 85th Cong., 2d Sess. 2-3 (1958), U.S.Code Cong. and Adm.News 1958, p. 4137. But passage of the bill was stimulated by the information then being gathered at hearings of the McClellan Committee. See 104 Cong.Rec. 7054, 7197-7198, 7233, 7337-7338, 7483, 7509-7510, 7521 (1958).

The Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act of 1959 was a direct response to the need for remedial federal legislation disclosed by the testimony before the McClellan Committee. This is made clear not by imprecise inferences drawn from legislative history; the proof is in the statute itself. Section 2(b) of the Act declares it to be a finding of Congress 'from recent investigations in the labor and management fields, that there have been a number of instances of breach of trust, corruption, disregard of the rights of individual employees, and other failures to observe high standards of responsibility and ethical conduct which require further and supplementary legislation.' 73 Stat. 519. The Senate and House Reports lean heavily on findings made by the McClellan Committee to justify particular provisions in the proposed bills. See S.Rep.No.187, 86th Cong., 1st Sess. 2, 6, 9, 10, 13-17 (1959), U.S.Code Cong. and Adm.News 1959, p. 2318; H.R.Rep.No.741, 86th Cong., 1st Sess. 1, 2, 6, 9, 11-13, 76, 83 (1959), U.S.Code Cong. and Adm.News 1959, p. 2424.

The resolution which gave birth to this Committee, when considered in light of the fruits of its labors, proves beyond any doubt 'that the committee members * *  * (were) serving as the representatives of the parent assembly in collecting information for a legislative purpose.' Watkins v. United States, supra, at 200, 77 S.Ct. at 1186. This is not a case involving an indefinite and fluctuating delegation which permits a legislative committee 'in essence, to define its own authority, to choose the direction and focus of its activities.' Id., at 205, 77 S.Ct. at 1188. This Committee was directed to investigate 'criminal or other improper practices * *  * in the field of labor-management relations.' Deciding whether acts that are made criminal by state law ought also to be brought within a federal prohibition, if, as here, the subject is a permissible one for federal regulation, turns entirely on legislative inquiry. And it is this inquiry in which the Senate was engaged when it assigned the fact-finding duty to the Select Committee on Improper Activities in the Labor or Management Field.

Moreover, this record is barren of evidence indicating that the Committee, for reasons of its own, undertook to 'expose' this petitioner.

First: The transcript discloses a most scrupulous adherence to the announced Committee policy of not asking a witness under state indictment any questions 'on the subject matter involved in the indictment.' Note 9, supra. This particular indictment related solely to activity in which petitioner and others had been engaged in their individual capacities, not on behalf of any labor organization. The Committee's concern was not whether petitioner had in fact defrauded the State of Indiana of $78,000 in concluding a dishonest sale or whether he had personally corrupted a state employee. Its interest, which was entirely within the province entrusted to it by the Senate, was to discover whether and how funds of the Brotherhood of Carpenters or of the Teamsters Union had been used in a conspiracy to bribe a state prosecutor to drop charges made against individuals who were also officers of the Brotherhood of Carpenters, and whether the influence of union officials had been exerted to that end. If these suspicions were founded, they would have supported remedial federal legislation for the future, even though they might at the same time have warranted a separate state prosecution for obstruction of justice, or been usable at the trial of the Marion County indictment as evidence of consciousness of guilt. Supra, 369 U.S., pp. 607-608, 82 S.Ct., pp. 1009-1010. But surely a congressional committee which is engaged in a legitimate legislative investigation need not grind to a halt whenever responses to its inquiries might potentially be harmful to a witness in some distinct proceeding, Sinclair v. United States, supra, 279 U.S. at 295, 49 S.Ct. at 272, or when crime or wrongdoing is disclosed, McGrain v. Daugherty, 273 U.S. 135, 179-180, 47 S.Ct. 319, 330, 71 L.Ed. 580.

Second: The information sought to be elicited by the Committee was pertinent to the legislative inquiry. The Committee was investigating whether and how union funds had been misused, in the interest of devising a legislative scheme to deal with irregular practices. Because of petitioner's refusal to answer questions, and because of the similar refusal by other witnesses to testify with regard to the Lake County grand jury proceedings, the Committee was not able to learn whether union funds or influence had been used to persuade Holovachka to drop those proceedings.

Petitioner contends that the Committee's finding in its Second Interim Report that Raddock had been 'used by Hutcheson as a fixer in an attempt to head-off the indictment of Hutcheson (and others) * *  * ' shows that his testimony was not needed for any purpose other than to prejudice or embarrass him. But this overlooks the fact that the Committee had been able to obtain no information whatever on the Lake County grand jury proceedings from any of the other witnesses by reason of their refusals to testify on the subject. Moreover, it does not lie with this Court to say when a congressional committee should be deemed to have acquired sufficient information for its legislative purposes.

Third: The Committee's interrogation was within the express terms of its authorizing resolution. If the Committee was to be at all effective in bringing to Congress' attention certain practices in the labor-management field which should be subject to federal prohibitions, it necessarily had to ask some witnesses questions which, if truthfully answered, might place them in jeopardy of state prosecution. Unless interrogation is met with a valid constitutional objection 'the scope of the power of (congressional) inquiry * *  * is as penetrating and far-reaching as the potential power to enact and appropriate under the Constitution.' Barenblatt v. United States, supra, 360 U.S. at 111, 79 S.Ct. at 1085. And it is not until the question is asked that the interrogator can know whether it will be answered or will be met with some constitutional objection. To deny the Committee the right to ask the question would be to turn an 'option of refusal' into a 'prohibition of inquiry,' 8 Wigmore, Evidence (3d ed.) § 2268, and to limit congressional inquiry to those areas in which there is not the slightest possibility of state prosecution for information that may be divulged. Such a restriction upon congressional investigatory powers should not be countenanced.

The three episodes upon which the petitioner relies as evidencing a Committee departure from these legitimate congressional concerns fall far short of sustaining what is sought to be made of them. The first of these is the Committee counsel's statement at the outset of the hearings explaining 'the subject matter being inquired into,' in the course of which he referred to the real estate transaction involved in the Marion County indictment, and explained the Committee's interest in finding out whether union funds or influence had been used in bringing to an end the Lake County grand jury investigation of the matter. The propriety of such an inquiry has already been discussed. 369 U.S., pp. 617-618, 82 S.Ct., pp. 1014-1015.

The second episode is the Chairman's statement to the effect that all the facts as to the Lake County proceedings had 'not been developed by the committee'; that further 'exposure' of them 'should be made'; and that the Committee stood ready to 'assist and help' Indiana if it chose to interest itself in the matter. We can see nothing in this statement, which was made after the Committee's inquiry had ended, beyond a perfectly normal offer on the part of the Chairman to put the Committee transcript at the disposal of the Indiana law enforcement authorities if they wished to avail themselves of it.

The final occurrence is the so-called Committee 'finding' as to petitioner's alleged use of Raddock as a 'fixer' to 'head-off' an indictment by the Lake County grand jury. Whatever the basis for that 'finding' (cf. note 18, supra), we must say that its mere inclusion in an official report to the Senate of the Committee's activities furnishes a slender reed indeed for a charge that that Committee was engaged in unconstitutional 'exposure.'

In conclusion, it is appropriate to observe that just as the Constitution forbids the Congress to enter fields reserved to the Executive and Judiciary, it imposes on the Judiciary the reciprocal duty of not lightly interfering with Congress' exercise of its legitimate powers. Having scrutinized this case with care, we conclude that the judgment of the Court of Appeals must be affirmed.

Affirmed.

Mr. Justice BLACK and Mr. Justice FRANKFURTER took no part in the decision of this case.

Mr. Justice WHITE took no part in the consideration or decision of this case.