Federal prosecution

“ To limit our inquiry to respondents' single standard would restrict us to unreality. For Congress is often explicit when it wishes state laws to conclude federal prosecution, to avoid the double punishment possible in a federal system. ”

“ The might and power of the Federal Government have no equal. When its guns are leveled at a citizen on charges that he committed a federal crime, it is for me no answer to say that the only purpose is to report his activities to the President and Congress, not to turn him over to the District Attorney for prosecution. Our Constitution was drawn on the theory that there are certain things government may not do to the citizen and that there are other things that may be done only in a specific manner. The relationship of the Federal Government to a man charged with crime is carefully defined. ”

“ In the absence of any misconduct or collusion by federal officers, whatever increase there is, if any, in the likelihood of federal prosecution following the witness' appearance before a state grand jury or agency results from the inferences drawn from the invocation of the privilege to specific questions on the ground that they are incriminating under federal law and not from the fact the witness has testified in what is frequently an in camera proceeding under a grant of immunity. ”

“ Could we possibly sustain a conviction obtained in either a state or federal court where the grand jury that brought the charge was composed of the accused's political enemies? If we did, we would sanction prosecution for private, not public, purposes. Whenever unfairness can be shown to infect any part of a criminal proceeding, we should hold that the requirements of due process are lacking. ”

“ As long as that decision is adhered to, the evidence obtained in a state proceeding such as the one in this case can be used in a federal prosecution. It is, therefore, too late to protect the federal right if one waits for action by the federal court. The federal right is lost irretrievably, if it is not saved by the state court. ”

“ To do so does violence to the vital principle of federalism that a state court is the final arbiter of state law. See May v. Anderson, 345 U.S. 528, 534, 535, 73 S.Ct. 840, 843, 844, 97 L.Ed. 1221. I therefore agree with Mr. Justice BLACK that this case should be remanded so that the New York Court of Appeals can reconsider state law in light of the majority's conclusion that the role of the federal prosecutor was not such as to prevent use of the state-compelled testimony against petitioner in a federal prosecution. ”

“ The prosecution to be removed under the section must have been instituted 'on account of' acts done by the defendant as a federal officer under color of his office or of the revenue or prohibition law. There must be causal connection between what the officer has done under asserted official authority and the state prosecution. ”

“ The commissioner shall admit the defendant to bail as provided in these rules.'
The scheme for initiating a federal prosecution is plainly defined. The police may not arrest upon mere suspicion but only on 'probable cause.' The next step in the proceeding is to arraign the arrested person before a judicial officer as quickly as possible so that he may be advised of his rights and so that the issue of probable cause may be promptly determined. The arrested person may, of course, be 'booked' by the police. ”

“ That answer proves too much, for it would enable federal agents themselves to violate the Federal Rules and, without fear of a federal injunction, produce all their illegally obtained evidence in a state prosecution.
A state agent should be enjoined from producing, as a witness in a state court proceeding, evidence he acquired solely as a result of federal agents' violation of the Federal Rules. ”

“ The Court confines itself to deciding the policy considerations that, in our federal system, must prevail when federal courts are asked to interfere with pending state prosecutions. Within this area, we hold that a federal court must not, save in exceptional and extremely limited circumstances, intervene by way of either injunction or declaration in an existing state criminal prosecution. [4] Such circumstances exist only when there is a threat of irreparable injury "both great and immediate." ”

“ In cataloguing the President's actions, many of which took place in public view, the report identifies no actions that, in our judgment, constitute obstructive conduct, had a nexus to a pending or contemplated proceeding, and were done with corrupt intent, each of which, under the Department's principles of federal prosecution guiding charging decisions, would need to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt to establish an obstruction-of-justice offense. ”

“ The Constitution creating a government of limited powers puts a bound upon those which are judicial as well as those which are legislative, which cannot be lawfully passed.
This view would seem to be conclusive against the validity of the attempted removal of the prosecution in this case from the State court. The Federal court could not in the first instance have taken jurisdiction of the offence charged, and summoned a grand jury to present an indictment against the accused; and if it could not have taken jurisdiction at first, it cannot do so upon a removal of the prosecution to it. ”

“ This only proves that the federal and State judiciaries have equally authority to judge of the validity of the acts of the other branches of both governments, and has no tendency whatever to establish the claim set up by federal judicial power, of supremacy over State judicial power.
This writ of error brings up the judgment rendered in a State Court, in a criminal prosecution. Every government must possess within itself, and independently, the power to punish offences against its laws. ”

“ Arguments founded on a supposed abuse of power are most unsatisfactory. In point of fact, no such abuse has yet arisen, nor is it likely to arise; for both governments are deeply concerned in the prevention of this sort of crime, and the State much more than the federal government.
But if it were admitted that the concurrent jurisdiction involved a liability to a double prosecution, or that there was probability of interference by the exercise of the pardoning power, these results would not divest the States of this portion of their sovereignty. ”

“ Grave doubts are entertained whether the Congress, in the use of the word 'prosecution,' intended to extend the operation of the act to such an indictment, as ample provision existed at the time of its passage for the re-examination of every question of Federal cognizance arising on the trial of such an indictment, by a writ of error sued out pursuant to the authority given in the twenty-fifth section of the Judiciary Act. ”

“ To answer that the underlying policy of the privilege subordinates the law enforcement function to the privilege of an individual will not do. For where there is only one government involved, be it state or federal, not only is the danger of prosecution more imminent and indeed the likely purpose of the investigation to facilitate prosecution and conviction, but that authority has the choice of exchanging immunity for the needed testimony. ”

“ It is enough if the prosecution for murder is based on or arises out of the acts he did under authority of federal law in the discharge of his duty and only by reason thereof.
In invoking the protection of a trial of a state offense in a federal court under section 33, a federal officer abandons his right to refuse to testify because accused of crime, at least to the extent of disclosing in his application for removal all the circumstances known to him out of which the prosecution arose. ”

“ As to the 'due process of law' that is required by the Fourteenth Amendment, it is perfectly well settled that a criminal prosecution in the courts of a state, based upon a law not in itself repugnant to the federal Constitution, and conducted according to the settled course of judicial proceedings as established by the law of the state, so long as it includes notice, and a hearing, or an opportunity to be heard, before a court of competent jurisdiction, according to established modes of procedure, is 'due process' in the constitutional sense. ”

“ If the federal equity power must refrain from staying State prosecutions outright to try the central question of the validity of the statute on which the prosecution is based, how much more reluctant must it be to intervene piecemeal to try collateral issues. ”

“ The Fifth Amendment forbids the Federal Government and the agents through which it acts-courts, grand juries, prosecutors, marshals or other officers-to use physical torture, psychological pressure, threats of fines, imprisonment or prosecution, or other governmental pressure to force a person to testify against himself. And if the Federal Government does extract incriminating testimony, as the Court has held it may in compelling gamblers to confess, the immunity provided by the Amendment should at the very least prevent the use of such testimony in any court, federal or state. ”

“ No one would suggest that state law could prevent a proper federal investigation; the Court had already held that the Federal Government could, under the Supremacy Clause, grant immunity from state prosecution, and that, accordingly, state law could not prevent a proper federal investigation. ”

“ Whether viewed as an exercise of this Court's supervisory power over the conduct of federal law enforcement officials or a constitutional rule necessary for meaningful enforcement of the privilege, this holding requires that compelled incriminating testimony given in a state proceeding not be used in any manner by federal officials in connection with a federal criminal prosecution. ”

“ We do not think this allegation, even if true, is sufficient to bring the equitable jurisdiction of the federal courts into play to enjoin a pending state prosecution. A federal lawsuit to stop a prosecution in a state court is a serious matter. And persons having no fears of state prosecution except those that are imaginary or speculative are not to be accepted as appropriate plaintiffs in such cases. See Golden v. Zwickler, 394 U.S. 103 (1969) . Since Harris is actually being prosecuted under the challenged laws, however, we proceed with him as a proper party. ”

“ Just as there should be no permitting of local considerations to stop federal enforcement, so there should be no striving to enlarge our power over local affairs and no use of federal prosecutions to exert an indirect influence that would be unlawful if exerted directly.
The qualities of a good prosecutor are as elusive and as impossible to define as those which mark a gentleman. ”

“ The considerations that have prompted denial of federal injunctive relief affecting state prosecutions were epitomized in the Stefanelli case, in which this Court refused to sanction an injunction against state officials to prevent them from using in a state criminal trial evidence seized by state police in alleged violation of the Fourteenth Amendment:
' (W) e would expose every State criminal prosecution to insupportable disruption. ”

“ Our task is to determine how much the federal authorities must participate in a state prosecution before it so infects the conviction that we must set it aside. The test, I submit, must be fashioned to secure the fundamental protection of the Fifth Amendment 'that the (Federal Government) with all its resources and power should not be allowed to make repeated attempts to convict an individual for an alleged offense, thereby subjecting him to embarrassment, expense and ordeal and compelling him to live in a continuing state of anxiety and insecurity * * *.' Green v. ”

“ We know that no local police force can strictly enforce the traffic laws, or it would arrest half the driving population on any given morning. What every prosecutor is practically required to do is to select the cases for prosecution and to select those in which the offense is the most flagrant, the public harm the greatest, and the proof the most certain. ”

“ The privilege afforded not only extends to answers that would in themselves support a conviction under a federal criminal statute but likewise embraces those which would furnish a link in the chain of evidence needed to prosecute the claimant for a federal crime. ”

“ Mackell, 401 U.S. 66, 91 S.Ct. 764, 27 L.Ed.2d 688, show, the normal course of state criminal prosecutions cannot be disrupted or blocked on the basis of charges which in the last analysis amount to nothing more than speculation about the future. The policy of a century and a half against interference by the federal courts with state law enforcement is not to be set aside on such flimsy allegations as those relied upon here. ”

“ Today we have again stressed the rule that federal intervention affecting pending state criminal prosecutions, either by injunction or by declaratory judgment, is proper only where irreparable injury is threatened. ”

“ The sifting of criminal charges against people is for the grand jury or for judges or magistrates and for them alone under our Constitution. In my view no other accusatory body can be used that withholds the rights of confrontation and cross-examination from those accused of federal crimes. ”

“ If in any instance there could be such legislation authorizing a criminal prosecution for disregarding a prohibition, that legislation should define the offence and declare the punishment, and not invade the independent action of the different departments of the State governments within their appropriate spheres. Legislation by Congress can neither be necessary nor appropriate which would subject to criminal prosecution State officers for the performance of duties prescribed by State laws, not having for their object the forcible subversion of the government. ”