Court Dismisses Hubbell Charge
Updated 10:51 AM ET June 5, 2000
By LAURIE ASSEO, Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON (AP) -
The Supreme Court today handed presidential friend Webster
Hubbell a victory that wipes out his guilty plea to a misdemeanor
tax charge.
The justices' 8-1 ruling said prosecutors could not use financial
documents against Hubbell that he was forced to produce under a
limited grant of immunity. Using the documents would violate his
protection against self-incrimination under the Constitution's
Fifth Amendment, the justices said.
Hubbell pleaded guilty to the tax charge last year on condition
his plea would be dismissed if the Supreme Court ruled in his
favor on whether the documents could be used.
Today, the nation's highest court ordered the charge against him
dismissed.
"The documents did not magically appear in the prosecutor's
office like 'manna from heaven,"' Justice John Paul Stevens wrote
for the court. "They arrived there only after (Hubbell) asserted
his constitutional privilege, received a grant of immunity" and
provided the documents.
"We have no doubt that the constitutional privilege against
self-incrimination protects the target of a grand jury
investigation from being compelled to answer questions designed
to elicit information about the existence of sources of
potentially incriminating evidence," Stevens wrote.
Hubbell had reached the plea agreement with former independent
counsel Kenneth Starr, who was replaced by Robert W. Ray last
October.
Hubbell was the former No. 3 official at the Justice Department
early in President Clinton's first term and has been a friend of
the president and his wife Hillary Rodham Clinton since their
Arkansas days.
The misdemeanor tax charge alleged that Hubbell evaded paying
taxes on some of the hundreds of thousands of dollars in income
he received from friends of the Clintons in 1994 during an
earlier investigation by Starr.
The tax charge, filed in April 1998, was based partly on
Hubbell's financial papers that he was required to give
prosecutors under a limited grant of immunity.
Although the Fifth Amendment protects criminal defendants from
being forced to testify against themselves, it does not protect
the contents of private documents someone created voluntarily.
However, the amendment does protect people from being forced to
give such documents to prosecutors, because that usually involves
confirming their existence and authenticity - a form of
testimony. Therefore, immunity generally must be given to people
being forced to turn over documents.
Hubbell argued that prosecutors could not use his papers to
prosecute him after giving him immunity. A federal judge agreed
and dismissed the charges.
The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia
revived the charges in January 1999 but said Starr's office could
use information from them only by showing prosecutors had
"reasonably particular knowledge" of their existence.
Starr's office conceded it could not meet that standard and
agreed to dismiss Hubbell's plea if the Supreme Court upheld the
appeals court's ruling.
In appealing to the Supreme Court, prosecutors said they should
be allowed to use the documents' contents so long as they did not
try to show the information came from Hubbell.
Prosecutors also argued that Hubbell had no Fifth Amendment
protection against producing the documents in the first place.
People can be forced to turn over documents without immunity if
the government already knows they exist, because prosecutors
would not need the person's confirmation of their existence.
Prosecutors in Hubbell's case said routine financial records
count as documents whose existence is a foregone conclusion.
Hubbell's lawyers argued that the grant of immunity meant the
documents he turned over were "hopelessly tainted" and could not
be used as evidence.
Today, the Supreme Court agreed with Hubbell.
"Here the government has not shown that it had any prior
knowledge of either the existence or the whereabouts of the
13,120 pages of documents ultimately produced" by Hubbell,
Stevens said. "The government cannot cure this deficiency
through the overbroad argument that a businessman ... will
always possess general business and tax records."
Stevens' opinion was joined by Justices Sandra Day O'Connor,
Antonin Scalia, Anthony M. Kennedy, David H. Souter, Clarence
Thomas, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer.
Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist dissented, saying he agreed
with a judge who dissented from the federal appeals court
decision.
Not affected by today's case is Hubbell's guilty plea to a felony
charge involving legal work for a savings and loan at the center
of the Whitewater investigation. He was sentenced to a year of
probation on that charge in June 1999.
Hubbell previously served 16 months in prison for bilking his
former Arkansas law firm and its clients. That charge resulted
from the earlier investigation by Starr.
The case is U.S. vs. Hubbell, 99-166.
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Shalom, A Salaam Aleikum, and to all, A Good Day.
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