Second Circuit Decision Applying Fifth Amendment to Foreign Compelled Testimony

Originally published by Jack Townsend.

The Second Circuit issued an important decision today dealing with the use — directly or indirectly — of testimony compelled by a foreign government in a U.S. criminal case.  United States v. Allen, ___ F.3d ___ (2017), here. This is not a tax prosecution, but the holding could apply in all U.S. prosecutions, tax or otherwise, where foreign compelled testimony is used.

The opinion is very long and very good.  The Court’s summary of the opinion is:

 This case—the first criminal appeal related to the London Interbank Offered Rate (“LIBOR”) to reach this (or any) Court of Appeals—presents the question, among others, whether testimony given by an individual involuntarily under the legal compulsion of a foreign power may be used against that individual in a criminal case in an American court. As employees in the London office of Coöperatieve Centrale Raiffeisen‐Boerenleenbank B.A. in the 2000s, defendants‐appellants Anthony Allen and Anthony Conti (“Defendants”) played roles in that bank’s LIBOR submission process  during the now‐well‐documented heyday of the rate’s manipulation. Defendants, each a resident and citizen of the United Kingdom, and both of whom had earlier given compelled testimony in that country, were tried and convicted in the United States before the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York (Jed S. Rakoff, Judge) for wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud and bank fraud.
While this appeal raises a number of substantial issues, we address only the Fifth Amendment issue, and conclude as follows.

First, the Fifth Amendment’s prohibition on the use of compelled testimony in American criminal proceedings applies even when a foreign sovereign has compelled the testimony.

Second, when the government makes use of a witness who had substantial exposure to a defendant’s compelled testimony, it is required under Kastigar v. United States, 406 U.S. 441 (1972), to prove, at a minimum, that the witness’s review of the compelled testimony did not shape, alter, or affect the evidence used by the government.

Third, a bare, generalized denial of taint from a witness who has materially altered his or her testimony after being substantially exposed to a defendant’s compelled testimony is insufficient as a matter of law to sustain the prosecution’s burden of proof.

Fourth, in this prosecution, Defendants’ compelled testimony was “used” against them, and this impermissible use before the petit and grand juries was not harmless beyond a resonable doubt.

Accordingly, we REVERSE the judgments of conviction and hereby DISMISS the indictment

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