author: Mr. Justice Douglas Mr. Justice Fortas, Me. Justice Harlan, Mr. Justice White,

text:
    SPEVACK v. KLEIN.
    No. 62.
    Argued November 7, 1966.
    Decided January 16, 1967.

      Lawrence J. Latt'o argued the cause for petitioner. With him on the briefs were William H. Dempsey, Jr., and Martin J. Flynn.

      Solomon A. Klein, respondent, pro se, argued the cause and filed a brief.
    Briefs of amici curiae, urging reversal, were filed by Israel Steingold, for the American Trial Lawyers Association; Herman B. Geninger for the New York State Association of Trial Lawyers; Ralph Shapiro for the New York City Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild; and by Emanuel Redfield for the New York Civil Liberties Union.

      John G. Bonomi filed a brief for the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, as amicus curiae, urging affirmance.
   Mr. Justice Douglas

announced the judgment of the Court and delivered an opinion in which The Chief Justice, Mr. Justice Black and Mr. Justice Brennan concur.

This is a proceeding to discipline petitioner, a member of the New York Bar, for professional misconduct. Of the various charges made, only one survived, viz., the refusal of petitioner to honor a subpoena duces tecum served on him in that he refused to produce the demanded financial records and refused to testify at the gidicial inquiry. Petitioner’s sole defense was that the roduction of the records and his testimony would tend to incriminate him. The Appellate Division of the New York Supreme Court ordered petitioner disbarred, holding that the constitutional privilege against self-incrimination was not available to him in light of our decision in Cohen v. Hurley, 366 U. S. 117. See 24 App. Div. 2d 653. The Court of Appeals affirmed, 16 N. Y. 2d 1048, 213 N. E. 2d 457, 17 N. Y. 2d 490, 214 N. E. 2d 373. The case is here on certiorari which we granted to determine whether Cohen v. Hurley, supra, had survived Malloy v. Hogan, 378 U. S. 1.

Cohen v. Hurley was a five-to-four decision rendered in 1961. It is practically on all fours with the present case. There, as here, an attorney relying on his privilege against self-incrimination refused to testify and was disbarred. The majority of the Court allowed New York to construe her own privilege against self-incrimination so as not to make it available in judicial inquiries of this character (366 U. S., at 125-127) and went on to hold that the Self-Incrimination Clause of the Fifth Amendment was not applicable to the States by reason of the Fourteenth. Id,., at 127-129. The minority took the view that the full sweep of the Fifth Amendment had been absorbed into the Fourteenth and extended its protection to lawyers as well as other persons.

In 1964 the Court in another five-to-four decision held that the Self-Incrimination Clause of the Fifth Amendment was applicable to the States by, reason of the Fourteenth. Malloy v. Hogan, 378 U. S. 1. While Cohen v. Hurley was not overruled, the majority indicated that the principle on which it rested had been seriously eroded. 378 U. S., at 11. One minority view espoused by Mb. Justice Harlan and Mr. Justice Clark stated that Cohen v. Hurley flatly decided that the Self-Incrimination Clause of the Fifth Amendment was not applicable against the States {id., at 17) and urged that it be followed. The others in dissent — Mr. Justice White and Mr. Justice Stewart — thought that on the facts of the case the privilege was not properly invoked and that the state trial judge should have been sustained in ruling that the answers would not tend to incriminate. Id., at 33-38.

The Appellate Division distinguished Malloy v. Hogan on the ground that there the petitioner was not a member of the Bar. 24 App. Div. 2d, at 654. And the Court of Appeals, rested squarely on Cohen v. Hurley as one of the two grounds for affirmance.

And so the question emerges whether the principle of A Malloy v. Hogan is inapplicable because petitioner is a member of the Bar. We conclude that Cohen v. Hurley should be overruled, that the Self-Incrimination Clause of the Fifth Amendment has been absorbed in the Fourteenth, that it extends its protection to lawyers as well as to other individuals, and that it should not be watered down by imposing the dishonor of disbarment and the deprivation of a livelihood as a price for asserting it. These views, expounded in the dissents in Cohen v. Hurley, need not be elaborated again.

We said in Malloy v. Hogan:

“The Fourteenth Amendment secures against state invasion the same privilege that the Fifth Amendment guarantees against federal infringement — the right of a person to remain silent unless he chooses to speak in the unfettered exercise of his own will, and to suffer no penalty ... for such silence.” 378 U. S., at 8.

In this context “penalty” is not restricted to fine or% imprisonment. It means, as we said in Griffin v. California, 380 U. S. 609, the imposition of any sanction j which makes assertion of the Fifth Amendment privilege \ “costly.” Id., at 614. We held in that case that the Fifth Amendment, operating through the Fourteenth, “forbids either comment by the prosecution on the accused’s silence or instructions by the court that such silence is evidence of guilt.” Id., at 615. What we said in Malloy and Griffin is in the tradition of the broad protection given the privilege at least since Boyd v. United States, 116 U. S. 616, 634-635, where compulsory production of t/ books and papers of the owner of goods sought to be forfeited was held to be compelling him to be a witness against himself.

“It may be that it is the obnoxious thing in its mildest and least repulsive form; but illegitimate and unconstitutional practices get their first footing in that way, namely, by silent approaches and slight deviations from legal modes of procedure. This can only be obviated by adhering to the rule that constitutional provisions for the security of person and property should be liberally construed. A close and literal construction deprives them of half their efficacy, and leads to gradual depreciation of the right, as if it consisted more in sound than in substance. It is the duty of courts to be watchful for the constitutional rights of the citizen, and against any stealthy encroachments thereon.” 116 U. S., at 635.

The threat of disbarment and the loss of professional standing, professional reputation, and of livelihood are powerful forms of compulsion to make a lawyer relinquish the privilege. That threat is indeed as powerful an instrument of compulsion as “the use of legal process to force from the lips of the accused individual the evidence necessary to convict him . . . United States v. White, 322 U. S. 694, 698. As we recently stated in Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U. S. 436, 461, “In this Court, the privilege has consistently been accorded a liberal construction.” It is in that tradition that we overrule Cohen v. Hurley. We find no room in the privilege against self-incrimination for classifications of people so as to deny it to some and extend it to others. Lawyers are not excepted from the words “No person . . . shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself”; and we can imply no exception. Like the school teacher in Slochower v. Board of Education, 350 U. S. 551, and the policemen in Garrity v. New Jersey, ante, p. 493, lawyers also enjoy first-class citizenship.

The Court of Appeals alternately affirmed the judgment disbarring petitioner on the ground that under Shapiro v. United States, 335 U. S. 1, and the required records doctrine he was under a duty to produce the withheld records. The Court of Appeals did not elaborate on the point; nor did the Appellate Division advert to it. At the time in question the only Rule governing the matter was entitled “Preservation of records of actions, claims and proceedings.” It provided that in cases involving “contingent fee compensation” attorneys for all the parties shall preserve “the pleadings, records and other papers pertaining to such action, claim and proceeding, and also all data and memoranda of the disposition thereof, for the period of at least five years after any settlement or satisfaction of the action, claim or proceeding or judgment or final order thereon, or after the dismissal or discontinuance of any action or proceeding brought.”

The documents sought in the subpoena were petitioner’s daybook, cash receipts book, cash disbursements book, checkbook stubs, petty cashbook and vouchers, general ledger and journal, canceled checks and bank statements, passbooks and other evidences of accounts, record of loans made, payroll records, and state and federal tax returns and worksheets relative thereto.

The Shapiro case dealt with a federal price control regulation requiring merchants to keep sales. records. The Court called them records with “public aspects,” as distinguished from private papers (335 U. S., at 34); and concluded by a divided vote that their compelled production did not violate the Fifth Amendment. We are asked to overrule Shapiro. But we find it unnecessary to reach it.

Rule 5, requiring the keeping of records, was broad and general — “the pleadings, records and other papers pertaining to such action, claim and proceeding, and also all data and memoranda of the disposition thereof.” The detailed financial aspects of contingent-fee litigation demanded might possibly by a broad, generous construction of the Rule be brought within its intendment. Our problem, however, is different. Neither the referee of the inquiry, nor counsel for the inquiry, nor the Appellate Division of the New York Supreme Court questioned the applicability of the privilege against self-incrimination to the records. All proceeded on the basis that petitioner could invoke the privilege with respect to the records, but that the price he might have to pay was disbarment. The Court of Appeals was the first to suggest that the privilege against self-incrimination was not applicable to the records. Petitioner, however, had been disbarred on the theory that the privilege was applicable to the records, but that the invocation of the privilege could lead to disbarment. His disbarment cannot be affirmed on the ground that the privilege was not applicable in the first place. Cole v. Arkansas, 333 U. S. 196, 201. For that procedure would deny him all opportunity at the trial to show that the Rule, fairly construed and understood, should not be given a broad sweep and to make a record that the documents demanded by the subpoena had no “public aspects” within the required records rule but were private papers.

Reversed.

Mr. Justice Fortas,

concurring in the judgment.

I agree that Cohen v. Hurley, 366 U. S. 117 (1961), should be overruled. But I would distinguish between a lawyer’s right to remain silent and that of a public employee who is asked questions specifically, directly, and narrowly relating to the performance of his official duties as distinguished from his beliefs or other matters that are not within the scope of the specific duties which he undertook faithfully to perform as part of his employment by the State. This Court has never held, for example, that a policeman may not be discharged for refusal in disciplinary proceedings to testify as to his conduct as a police officer. It is quite a different matter if the State seeks to use the testimony given under this lash in a subsequent criminal proceeding. Garrity v. New Jersey, ante, p. 493.

But a lawyer is not an employee of the State. He does not have the responsibility of an employee to account to the State for his actions because he does not perform them as agent of the State. His responsibility to the State is to obey its laws and the rules of conduct that it has generally laid down as part of its licensing procedures. The special responsibilities that he assumes as licensee of the State and officer of the court do not carry with them a diminution, however limited, of his Fifth Amendment rights. Accordingly, I agree that Spevack could not be disbarred for asserting his privilege against self-incrimination.

If this case presented the question whether a lawyer might be disbarred for refusal to keep or to produce, upon properly authorized and particularized demand, records which the lawyer was lawfully and properly required to keep by the State as a proper part of its functions in relation to him as licensor of his high calling, I should feel compelled to vote to affirm, although I would be prepared in an appropriate case to re-examine the scope of the principle announced in Shapiro v. United States, 335 U. S. 1 (1948). I am not prepared to indicate doubt as to the essential validity of Shapiro. However, I agree that the required records issue is not appropriately presented here, for the reasons stated by my Brother Douglas. On this basis I join in the judgment of the Court.

Me. Justice Harlan,

whom Mr. Justice Clark and Mr. Justice Stewart join,

dissenting.

This decision, made in the name of the Constitution, permits a lawyer suspected of professional misconduct to thwart direct official inquiry of him without fear of disciplinary action. What is done today will be disheartening and frustrating to courts and bar associations throughout the country in their efforts to maintain high standards at the bar.

It exposes this Court itself to the possible indignity that it may one day have to admit to its own bar such a lawyer unless it can somehow get at the truth of suspicions, the investigation of which the applicant has previously succeeded in blocking. For I can perceive no distinction between “admission” and “disbarment” in the rationale of what is now held. The decision might even lend some color of support for justifying the appointment to the bench of a lawyer who, like petitioner, prevents full inquiry into his professional behavior. And, still more pervasively, this decision can hardly fail to encourage oncoming generations of lawyers to think of their calling as imposing on them no higher standards of behavior than might be acceptable in the general marketplace. The soundness of a constitutional doctrine carrying such denigrating import for our profession is surely suspect on its face.

Six years ago a majority of this Court, in Cohen v. Hurley, 366 U. S. 117, set its, face against the doctrine that now prevails, bringing to bear in support of the Court’s holding, among other things, the then-established constitutional proposition that the Fourteenth Amendment did not make applicable to the States the Fifth Amendment as such. Three years later another majority of the Court, in Malloy v. Hogan, 378 U.S. 1, decided to make the Fifth Amendment applicable to the States and in doing so cast doubt on the continuing vitality of Cohen v. Hurley. The question now is whether Malloy requires the overruling of Cohen in its entirety. For reasons that follow I think it clear that it does not.

It should first be emphasized that the issue here is plainly not whether lawyers may “enjoy first-class citizenship.” Nor is the issue whether lawyers may be deprived of their federal privilege against self-incrimination, whether or not criminal prosecution is undertaken against them. These diversionary questions have of course not been presented or even remotely suggested by this case either here or in the courts of New York. The plurality opinion’s vivid rhetoric thus serves only to obscure the issues with which we are actually confronted, and to hinder their serious consideration. The- true question here is instead the proper scope and effect of the privilege against self-incrimination under the Fourteenth Amendment in state disciplinary proceedings against attorneys. In particular, we are required to determine whether petitioner’s disbarment for his failure to provide information relevant to charges of misconduct in carrying on his law practice impermissibly vitiated the protection afforded by the privilege. This important question warrants more complete and discriminating analysis than that given to it by the plurality opinion.'

This Court reiterated only last Term that the constitutional privilege against self-incrimination “has never been given the full scope which the values it helps to protect suggest.” Schmerber v. California, 384 U. S. 757, 762. The Constitution contains no formulae with which we can calculate the areas within this “full scope” to which the privilege should extend, and the Court has therefore been obliged to fashion for itself standards for the application of the privilege. In federal cases stemming from Fifth Amendment claims, the Court has chiefly derived its standards from consideration of two factors: the history and purposes of the privilege, and the character and urgency of the other public interests involved. See, e. g., Orloff v. Willoughby, 345 U. S. 83; Davis v. United States, 328 U. S. 582; Shapiro v. United States, 335 U. S. 1. If, as Malloy v. Hogan, supra, suggests, the federal standards imposed by the Fifth Amendment are now to be extended to the States through the Fourteenth Amendment, see also Griffin v. California, 380 U. S. 609, it would follow that these same factors must be no less relevant in cases centering on Fourteenth Amendment claims. In any event, the construction consistently given to the Fourteenth Amendment by this Court would require their consideration. Bates v. City of Little Rock, 361 U. S. 516. I therefore first turn to these factors to assess the validity under the Fourteenth Amendment of petitioner’s .disbarment.

It cannot be claimed that the purposes served by the New York rules at issue here, compendiously aimed at “ambulance chasing” and its attendant evils, are unimportant or unrelated to the protection of legitimate state interests. This' Court has often held that the States have broad authority to devise both requirements for admission and standards of practice for those who wish to enter the professions. E. g., Hawker v. New York, 170 U. S. 189; Dent v. West Virginia, 129 U. S. 114; Barsky v. Board of Regents, 347 U. S. 442. The States may demand any qualifications ‘ which have “a rational connection with the applicant’s fitness or capacity,” Schware v. Board of Bar Examiners, 353 U. S. 232, 239, and may exclude any applicant who fails to satisfy them. In particular, a State may require evidence of good character, and may place the onus of its production upon the applicant. Konigsberg v. State Bar of California, 366 U. S. 36. Finally, a State may without constitutional objection require in the same fashion continuing evidence of professional and moral fitness as a condition of the retention of the right to practice. Cohen v. Hurley, 366 U. S. 117. All this is in no way questioned by today’s decision.

As one prerequisite of continued practice in New York, the Appellate Division, Second Department, of the Supreme Court of New York has determined that attorneys must actively assist the courts and the appropriate professional groups in the prevention and detection of unethical legal activities. The Second Department demands that attorneys maintain various records, file statements of retainer in certain kinds of cases, and upon request provide information, all relevant to the use by the attorneys of contingent fee arrangements in such cases. These rules are intended to protect the public from the abuses revealed by a lengthy series of investigations of malpractices in the geographical area represented by the Second Department. It cannot be said that these conditions are arbitrary or unreasonable, or that they are unrelated to an attorney’s continued fitness to practice. English courts since Edward I have endeavored to regulate the qualification and practice of lawyers, always in hope that this might better assure the integrity and evenhandedness of the administration of justice. Very similar efforts have been made in the United States since the 17th century. These efforts have protected the systems of justice in both countries from abuse, and have directly contributed to public confidence in those systems. Such efforts give appropriate recognition. to the principle accepted both here and in England that lawyers are officers of the court who perform a fundamental role in the administration of justice. The rules at issue here are in form and spirit a continuation of these efforts, and accordingly are reasonably calculated to serve the most enduring interests of the citizens of New York.

Without denying the urgency or significance of the public purposes served by these rules, the plurality opinion has seemingly concluded that they may not be enforced because any consequence of a claim of the privilege against self-incrimination which renders that claim “costly” is an “instrument of compulsion” which impermissibly infringes on the protection offered by the privilege. Apart from brief obiter dicta in recent opinions of this Court, this broad proposition is entirely without support in the construction hitherto given to the privilege, and is directly inconsistent with a series of cases in which this Court has indicated the principles which are properly applicable here. The Court has not before held that the Federal Government and the States are forbidden to permit any consequences to result from a claim of the privilege; it has instead recognized that such consequences may vary widely in kind and intensity, and that these differences warrant individual examination both of the hazard, if any, offered to the essential purposes of the privilege, and of the public interests protected by the consequence. This process is- far better calculated than the broad prohibition embraced by the plurality to serve both the purposes of the privilege and the other important public values which are often at stake in such cases. It would assure the integrity of the privilege, and yet guarantee the most generous opportunities for the pursuit of other public values, by selecting the rule or standard most appropriate for the hazards and characteristics of each consequence.

One such rule has already been plainly approved by this Court. It seems clear to me that this rule is applicable to the situation now before us. The Court has repeatedly recognized that it is permissible to deny a status or authority to a claimant of the privilege against self-incrimination if his claim has prevented full assessment of his qualifications for the status or authority. Under this rule, the applicant may not both decline to disclose information necessary to demonstrate his fitness, and yet demand that he receive the benefits of the status. He may not by his interjection of the privilege either diminish his obligation to establish his qualifications, or escape the consequences exacted by the State for a failure to satisfy that obligation.

This rule was established by this Court in Orloff v. Willoughby, 345 U. S. 83. The Court there held that a doctor who refused, under a claim of the privilege against self-incrimination, to divulge whether he was a Communist was not entitled by right to receive a commission as an Army officer, although he had apparently satisfied every other prerequisite for a commission. The Court expressly noted that “[njo one believes he can be punished” for asserting the privilege, but said that it had “no hesitation” in holding that the petitioner nonetheless could not both rely on the privilege to deny relevant information to the commissioning authorities and demand that he be appointed to a position of “honor and trust.” 345 U. S., at 91. The Court concluded that “we cannot doubt that the President of the United States, before certifying his confidence in an officer and appointing him to a commissioned rank, has the right to learn whatever facts the President thinks may affect his fitness.” Ibid.

Analogous problems were involved in Kimm v. Rosenberg, 363 U. S. 405, in which the Court held that an alien whose deportation had been ordered was ineligible for a discretionary order permitting his voluntary departure. The alien was held to be ineligible because he had failed to establish that he was not affiliated with the Communist Party, in that he refused to answer questions about membership in the Party on grounds that the answers might incriminate him. The petitioner could not prevent the application of a sanction imposed as a result of his silence by interposing the privilege against self-incrimination as a basis for that silence.

These principles have also been employed by this Court to hold that failure to incriminate one’s self can result in denial of the removal of one’s case from a state to a federal court, Maryland v. Soper (No. 1), 270 U. S. 9, and by the Fourth Circuit to hold that a bankrupt’s failure to disclose the disposition of his property, although disclosure might incriminate him, requires the denial of a discharge in bankruptcy. Kaufman v. Hurwitz, 176 F. 2d 210.

This Court has applied similar principles in a series of cases involving claims under the Fourteenth Amendment. These cases all antedate Malloy v. Hogan, and thus are presumably now subject to the “federal standards,” but until today those standards included the principles of Orloff v. Willoughby, and Malloy v. Hogan therefore could not alone require a different result. The fulcrum of these cases has been Slochower v. Board of Education, 350 U. S. 551. The appellant there was an associate professor at Brooklyn College who invoked the Fifth Amendment privilege before an investigating committee of the United States Senate, and was subsequently discharged from his position at the college by reason of that occurrence. The Court held that his removal was a denial of the due process demanded by the Fourteenth Amendment. Its reasons were apparently two: first, the Board had attached a “sinister meaning,” in the form of an imputation of guilt, to Slochower’s invocation of the privilege; and second, the Board was not engaged in a bona fide effort to elicit information relevant to assess the “qualifications of its employees.” The state authorities “had possessed the pertinent information for 12 years,” and in any event the questions put to Slochower by the committee were “wholly unrelated” to his university functions. 350 U. S., at 558.

The elements of the holding in Slochower have subsequently been carefully considered on several occasions by this Court. See, e. g., Beilan v. Board of Education, 357 U. S. 399; Lerner v. Casey, 357 U. S. 468; Nelson v. Los Angeles County, 362 U. S. 1. These cases, when read with Slochower, make plain that so long as state authorities do not derive any imputation of guilt from a claim of the privilege, they may in the course of a bona fide assessment of an employee’s fitness for public employment require that the employee disclose information reasonably related to his fitness, and may order his discharge if he declines. Identical principles have been applied by this Court to applicants for admission to the bar who have refused to produce information pertinent to their professional and moral qualifications. Konigsberg v. State Bar of California, 366 U. S. 36; In re Anastaplo, 366 U. S. 82. In sum, all these cases adopted principles under the Fourteenth Amendment which are plainly congruent with those applied in Orloff v. Willoughby, supra, and other federal cases to Fifth Amendment claims.

The petitioner here does not contend, and the plurality opinion does not suggest, that the state courts have derived any inference of guilt from petitioner’s claim of the privilege. The state courts have expressly disclaimed all such inferences. 24 App. Div. 2d 653, 654. Nor is it suggested that the proceedings against petitioner were not an effort in good faith to assess his qualifications for continued practice in New York, or that the information sought from petitioner was not reasonably relevant to those qualifications. It would therefore follow that under the construction consistently given by this Court both to the privilege under the Fifth Amendment and to the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, petitioner’s disbarment is constitutionally permissible.

The plurality opinion does not pause either to acknowledge the previous handling of these issues or to explain why the privilege must now be supposed to forbid all consequences which may result from privileged silence. This is scarcely surprising, for the plurality opinion would create a novel and entirely unnecessary extension of the privilege which would exceed the needs of the privilege’s purpose and seriously inhibit the protection of other public interests. The petitioner was not denied his privilege against self-incrimination, nor was he penalized for its use; he was denied his authority to practice law within the State of New York by reason of his failure to satisfy valid obligations imposed by the State as a condition of that authority. The only hazard in this process to the integrity of the privilege is the possibility that it might induce involuntary disclosures of incriminating materials; the sanction precisely calculated to eliminate that hazard is to exclude the use by prosecuting authorities of such materials and of their fruits. This Court has, upon proof of involuntariness, consistently forbidden their use since Brown v. Mississippi, 297 U. S. 278, and now, as my Brother White has emphasized, the plurality has intensified this protection still further with the broad prohibitory rule it has announced today in Garrity v. New Jersey, ante, p. 493. It is true that this Court has on occasion gone a step further, and forbidden the practices likely to produce involuntary disclosures, but those cases are readily distinguishable. They have uniformly involved either situations in which the entire process was thought both to present excessive risks of coercion and to be foreign to our accusatorial system, as in Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U. S. 436, or situations in which the only possible purpose of the practice was thought to be to penalize the accused for his use of the constitutional privilege, as in Griffin v. California, 380 U. S. 609. Both situations are plainly remote from that in issue here. None of the reasons thought to require the prohibitions established in those cases have any relevance in the situation now before us; nothing in New York’s efforts in good faith to assure the integrity of its judicial system destroys, inhibits, or even minimizes the petitioner’s constitutional privilege. There is therefore no need to speculate whether lawyers, or those in any other profession or occupation, have waived in some unspecified fashion a measure of the protection afforded by the constitutional privilege; it suffices that the State is earnestly concerned with an urgent public interest, and that it has selected methods for the pursuit of that interest which do not prevent attainment of the privilege’s purposes.

I think it manifest that this Court is required neither by the logic of the privilege against self-incrimination nor by previous authority to invalidate these state rules, and thus to overturn the disbarment of the petitioner. Today’s application of the privilege serves only to hamper appropriate protection of other fundamental public values.

In view of these conclusions, I find it unnecessary to reach the alternative basis of the Court of Appeals’ decision, the “required records doctrine.” See Shapiro v. United States, 335 U. S. 1.

I would affirm the judgment of disbarment.

Mr. Justice White,

dissenting.

In No. 13, Garrity v. New Jersey, the Court apparently holds that in every imaginable circumstance the threat of discharge issued by one public officer to another will be impermissible compulsion sufficient to render subsequent answers to questions inadmissible in a criminal proceeding. I would agree that in some, if not in most, cases this would be the proper result. But the circumstances of such confrontations are of infinite variety. Rather than the Court’s inflexible, per se rule, the matter should be decided on the facts of each particular case. In the situation before us now, I agree with my Brother Harlan that the findings of the two courts below should not be overturned.

However that may be, with Garrity on the books, the Court compounds its error in Spevack v. Klein, No. 62. The petitioner in that case refused to testify and to produce any of his records. He incriminated himself in no way whatsoever. The Court nevertheless holds that he may not be disbarred for his refusal to do so. Such a rule would seem justifiable only on the ground that it is an essential measure to protect against self-incrimination— to prevent what may well be a successful attempt to elicit incriminating admissions. But Garrity excludes such statements, and their fruits, from a criminal proceeding and therefore frustrates in advance any effort to compel admissions which could be used to obtain a criminal conviction. I therefore see little legal or practical basis, in terms of the privilege against self-incrimination protected by the Fifth Amendment, for preventing the discharge of a public employee or the disbarment of a lawyer who refuses to talk about the performance of his public duty.

In Murphy v. Waterfront Comm’n, 378 U. S. 52, the Court held that “a state witness may not be compelled to give testimony which may be incriminating under federal law unless the compelled testimony and its fruits cannot be used in any manner by federal officials in connection with a criminal prosecution against him.” 378 U. S., at 79. To implement this holding the Court further ruled that the Federal Government would be constitutionally prohibited from making any such use of compelled testimony and its fruits. This holding was based on the desirability of accommodating the interests of the State and the Federal Government in investigating and prosecuting crime.

A similar accommodation should be made here, although the multiple interests involved are those of the State alone. The majority does not deny that the State and its citizens have a legitimate interest in ridding themselves of faithless officers. Admittedly, however, in attempting to determine the present qualifications of an employee by consultation with the employee himself, the State may ask for information which, if given, would not only result in a discharge but would be very useful evidence in a criminal proceeding. Garrity, in my view, protects against the latter possibility. Consequently, I see no reason for refusing to permit the State to pursue its other valid interest and to discharge an employee who refuses to cooperate in the State’s effort to determine his qualifications for continued employment.

In my view, Spevack was properly disbarred. With all due respect, I therefore dissent.

       “Order affirmed on the authority of Cohen v. Hurley (366 U. S. 117) and on the further ground that the Fifth Amendment privilege does not apply to a demand, not for oral testimony, but that an attorney produce records required by law to be kept by him (Davis v. United States, 328 U. S. 582; Shapiro v. United States, 335 U. S. 1).” 16 N. Y. 2d 1048, 1050, 213 N. E. 2d 457-458.

        Kimm v. Rosenberg, 363 U. S. 405, much relied on here, was a five-to-four decision the other way and accurately reflected the pre-
        Malloy v. Hogan construction of the Fifth Amendment. We do not stop to re-examine all the other prior decisions of that vintage to determine which of them, if any, would be decided the other way because of “the right of a person to remain silent unless he chooses to speak in the unfettered exercise of his own will, and to suffer no :penalty ... for such silence,” as declared in Malloy v. Hogan, supra, at 8. (Italics added.)

       Whether a policeman, who invokes the privilege when his conduct as a police officer is questioned in disciplinary proceedings, may be discharged for refusing to testify is a question we did not reach.

       Rule 5 of the Special Rules of the Second Dept., Appellate Division. Rule 5’ was subsequently amended and renumbered as Special Rule IV (6). See Civil Practice Annual of New York 9-24 (1964).

       Counsel for respondent conceded on oral argument that the subpoena was broader than Rule 5:
      “Q. Is this subpoena coextensive with the provisions of the order about keeping the financial records or does the subpoena go beyond ?
      “A. I would say in my judgment it goes beyond. . . . There is room for reasonable argument that some of the items called for in the subpoena might perhaps be argued to not come within the required records I am talking about.
      “Q. Would you mind relating those to us? Tell us what those are. . . . Cash disbursements?
      “A. I would say do come under the records. ... I would exclude as not coming within the statute the federal and state tax returns for example. . . .
      “Q. How about worksheets . . . ?
      “A. Worksheets? Out. ...
      “Q. You mean all of item 12 . . . would be out?

        “A. Item 12 — copies of federal and state tax returns, accountants’ worksheets, and all other ... I do not include them.
      “Q. They would all be outside the rules?
      “A. Yes.
      “Q. But the demand was for records beyond the records that he was required to keep.
      “A. [T]he New York Court of Appeals, speaking for the State of New York, says these are required records.
      “Q. I suppose that if he produced just the records that were required — that he was required to keep — that that might very well constitute a waiver as to other records.
      “A. No, no it would not. . . .
      “Q. Why not?
      “A. Because if the other records were held not to come within the required records doctrine he would have the privilege to do that, but he has no privilege.
      “Q. I am not sure. Are you sure about that? ... I would say that the common understanding is that if he produces some of the records relating to a given subject matter, that is a waiver of privilege as to the balance of the records relating to the subject matter. Am I wrong about that?

        “A. I would not agree with that. It is an argument that could be made but I would disagree with it for this reason. Under the doctrine of Shapiro v. United States, he has no Fifth Amendment privilege as to records that are required to be kept. He does have Fifth Amendment privilege as to records he is not required to keep and also as to refusal to give oral testimony.”

       No claim has been made either here or in the state courts that the underljdng facts representing petitioner’s alleged conduct were not such as to entitle him to claim the privilege against self-incrimination. We therefore deal with the case on the premise that his claim of privilege was properly asserted.

       The history of these efforts is outlined in Cohen, A History of the English Bar and Attornatus to 1450, 277 et seq., 2 Holdsworth, A History of English Law 317, 504 et seq.; 6 id.., 431 et seq.

       These efforts are traced in Warren, History of the American Bar, passim.

       Evidences of this principle may be found in the opinions of this Court. See, e. g., Ex parte Bradley, 7 Wall. 364; Powell v. Alabama, 287 U. S. 45; Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U. S. 335.

       It should be noted that the principle that a license or status may be denied to one who refuses, under the shelter of the constitutional privilege, to disclose information pertinent to that status or privilege, has been adopted in a variety of situations- by statute. See, e. g., 12 U. S. C. §481; 47 U. S. C. §§308 (b), 312 (a)(4); 5 U. S. C. § 2283.

      [This opinion applies also to No. 13, Garrity v. New Jersey, ante, p. 493.]

       The opinion of my Brother Douglas professes not to resolve whether policemen may be discharged for refusing to cooperate with an investigation into alleged misconduct. However, the reasoning used to reach his result in the case of lawyers would seemingly apply with equal persuasiveness in the case of public employees.


source: Caselaw Access Project

author: Per Curiam.

license: Public Domain

text:
    McLEOD, REGIONAL DIRECTOR, NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD v. GENERAL ELECTRIC CO. et al.
    No. 645.
    Decided January 16, 1967.

      Solicitor General Marshall, Richard A. Posner, Arnold Ordman, Dominick L. Manoli and Norton J. Come for petitioner in No. 645.

      Irving Abramson and Ruth Weyand for petitioner in No. 774 and for respondent International Union of Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers, AFL-CIO, in No. 645.

      David L. Benetar for respondent General Electric Co. in both cases.

      Together with No. 774, International Union of Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers, AFL-CIO v. General Electric Co. et al., also on petition for writ of certiorari to the same court.

   Per Curiam.

The petitions for certiorari are granted. The judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit is set aside with direction to that court to enter a new judgment consistent with this opinion.

The Regional Director of the Second Region of the National Labor Relations Board issued a complaint and notice of hearing upon a charge filed by the International Union of Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers, AFL-CIO (IUE). The charge alleged that General Electric Company violated §§ 8 (a)(1) and (5) of the National Labor Relations Act, as amended, 61 Stat. 140, 29 U. S. C. §§ 158 (a)(1) and (5), in refusing to bargain upon the renewal of an expiring collective bargaining agreement because of “the inclusion among the persons designated by the Union to represent it ... of persons who also represented other labor organizations which engaged in collective bargaining with” the company. Pursuant to § 10 (j) of the Act the Regional Director also obtained a temporary injunction in the District Court for the Southern District of New York restraining the company from “[fjailing or refusing to meet, confer and bargain collectively in good faith with . . . [IUE], by declining to meet with the selected representatives of . . . [IUE] because of the presence of any representatives of other unions whom IUE and its constituent locals have invited to attend for the purpose of participating in the discussion and advising ór consulting with IUE and its constituent locals.” The Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit reversed. 366 F. 2d 847. Mr. Justice Harlan stayed the Court of Appeals’ judgment pending action on the petition for writ of certiorari filed in No. 645.

The District Court and the Court of Appeals differed regarding the proper standard which should be determinative of the right to injunctive relief under § 10 (j). The District Court applied a dual test: (1) whether “the impact upon the public interest is grave enough to justify swifter corrective action than the normal process of Board adjudication and court enforcement,” 257 F. Supp. 690, 708, and (2) “whether the Board has ‘reasonable cause to believe’ that the accused party has been guilty of unfair labor practices.” 257 F. Supp., at 709. The Court of Appeals on the other hand considered the proper standard to be whether the Board had “demonstrated that an injunction is necessary to preserve the status quo or to prevent any irreparable harm.” 366 F. 2d, at 850.

We do not think it appropriate however to decide at this time the proper construction of § 10 (j). For on October 14, 1966, after the decision of the Court of Appeals, the company and IUE agreed upon a three-year collective bargaining agreement to replace the expired contract. We think th$t the District Court should determine in the first instance the effect of this supervening event upon the appropriateness of injunctive relief. The controversy over the proper standard for injunctive relief is immaterial if such relief is now improper whichever standard is applied. We therefore dissolve the stay granted by Mr. Justice Harlan and set.aside the judgment of the Court of Appeals with direction to enter a new judgment setting aside the order of the District Court and remanding to that court for such further proceedings as may be appropriate in light of the supervening event. See Calhoun v. Latimer, 377 U. S. 263; Scranton v. Drew, 379 U. S. 40.

It is so ordered.


text:
    ALEXANDER v. BOARD OF REVIEW, DIVISION OF EMPLOYMENT SECURITY, DEPARTMENT OF LABOR AND INDUSTRY OF NEW JERSEY.
    No. 892,
    Misc.
    Decided January 16, 1967.
    Appellant pro se.

      Dominic J. Hart for appellee.
   Per Curiam.

The motion to dismiss is granted and the appeal is dismissed for want of jurisdiction. Treating the papers whereon the appeal was taken as a petition for a writ of certiorari, certiorari is denied.


text:
    McCONAGHY v. McCONAGHY.
    No. 929,
    Misc.
    Decided January 16, 1967.
   Per Curiam.

The appeal is dismissed for want of jurisdiction. Treating the papers whereon the appeal was taken as a petition for a writ of certiorari, certiorari is denied.


text:
    SHORT et al. v. NESS PRODUCE CO.
    No. 779.
    Decided January 16, 1967.

      Robert Y. Thornton, Attorney General of Oregon, and Harold E. Burke and Don Parker, Assistant Attorneys General, for appellants.

      J. Bradley Colburn and Theodore B. Jensen for appellee.
   Per Curiam.

The motion to affirm is granted and the judgment is affirmed.

Mr. Justice Black and Mr. Justice Harlan are of the opinion that probable jurisdiction should be noted and the case set for oral argument.


author: Mr. Justice Clark

text:
    SIMS v. GEORGIA.
    No. 251.
    Argued December 6-7, 1966.
    Decided January 23, 1967.

      Jack Greenberg argued the cause for petitioner. With him on the brief were James M. Nabrit III, Anthony G. Amsterdam and Howard Moore, Jr.

      Dewey Hayes, Solicitor General of Georgia, and E. Freeman Leverett, Deputy Assistant Attorney General, argued the cause for respondent. With them on the brief was Arthur K. Bolton, Attorney General.
   Mr. Justice Clark

delivered the opinion of the Court.

Petitioner, a Negro, has been convicted of raping a white woman and has been given the death penalty. He raises five federal questions for consideration by this Court, among which is that his Fourteenth Amendment rights to a fair trial were violated by the state trial judge’s failure to determine the voluntariness of his alleged confession prior to its admission into evidence before the jury, as required by the rule in Jackson v. Denno, 378 U. S. 368 (1964). The Supreme Court of Georgia ruled that Jackson was not applicable and affirmed petitioner’s conviction, Sims v. State, 221 Ga. 190, 144 S. E. 2d 103. We granted certiorari limited to the five questions, 384 U. S. 998. We have determined that petitioner’s case is controlled by Jackson, supra, and therefore we do not reach any of the other issues raised.

I.

The record indicates that on April 13, 1963, a 29-year-old white woman was driving home alone in her automobile when petitioner drove up behind her in his car, forced her off the road into a ditch, took the woman from her car into nearby woods and forcibly raped her. When he returned to his car, he could not start the engine so he left the scene on foot. Some four hours later he was apprehended by some Negro workers who had been alerted to be on the watch for him. He told these Negroes that he had attacked a white woman. They then turned petitioner over to their employer who delivered him to two state patrolmen. He was then taken to the office of a Doctor Jackson who had previously examined the victim. Petitioner’s clothing was removed in order to test it for blood stains. Petitioner testified that while he was in Doctor Jackson’s office he was knocked down, kicked over the right eye and pulled around the floor by his private parts. He was taken to a hospital owned by Doctor Jackson, which was adjacent to his office, where four stitches were taken in his forehead. Thereafter the patrolmen took petitioner to Waycross, Georgia, some 30 miles distant, where he was placed in the county jail. During that evening, he saw a deputy sheriff whom he had known for some 13 years and who was on duty on the same floor of the jail where petitioner was incarcerated. He agreed to make a statement and was taken to an interview room where, in the presence of the sheriff, the deputy sheriff and two police officers, he signed a written confession. Two days later he was arraigned.

Prior to trial petitioner filed a motion to suppress the confession as being the result of coercion. A hearing was held before the court out of the presence of the jury. The sheriff and the deputy testified to the circumstances surrounding the taking and signing of the confession. Petitioner testified as to the abuse he had received while in Doctor Jackson’s office. He testified that he “felt pretty rough for about two or three weeks [after the incident], more on my private than I did on my face” and that he “was paining a right smart.” There was no contradictory testimony taken. The court denied the motion to suppress without opinion or findings and the confession was admitted into evidence at petitioner’s trial.

At the trial, Doctor Jackson was a witness for the State. On cross-examination he denied that he had knocked petitioner down while the latter was in his office, or that he had kicked him in the forehead but made no mention of the other abuse about which petitioner testified. The doctor stated that petitioner was not abused in his presence but he refused to say whether the patrolmen present abused petitioner as he was not in the office at all times while the petitioner was there with the patrolmen. In this state of the record petitioner’s testimony in this regard was left uncontradicted.

II.

There is no actual ruling or finding in the record showing that the trial judge determined the voluntariness of the confession. Although he admitted it into evidence, it appears that he was only following a long-standing state practice that the “State having made out a prima facie case that the alleged confession was freely and voluntarily made, it was a question for the jury to determine on conflicting evidence whether the alleged confession was freely and voluntarily made.” Downs v. State, 208 Ga. 619, 621, 68 S. E. 2d 568, 570. Defense counsel called the court’s attention to the Jackson v. Denno ruling of this Court and stated that he did not “know whether the procedure being followed at this time satisfies the rule decided by the Supreme Court on June 22nd, 1964, that the Court must make judicial determination whether the statement was made voluntarily before it is read to the jury.” In his charge to the jury the judge directed that it was for the jury to determine whether the confession was actually made or not and to disregard it if not made freely and voluntarily.

III.

On appeal to the Supreme Court of Georgia, it was held proper for the trial judge to have left the question of the voluntariness of the confession to the jurors with instructions that they should disregard it if they should determine that it was not, in fact, voluntarily made. Indeed, that court specifically found that the “related facts made a prima facie showing that the statement was freely and voluntarily made and admissible in evidence.” 221 Ga., at 198, 144 S. E. 2d, at 110. It therefore seems clear from the opinion of the highest court of Georgia that it has applied its own rule rather than having followed the rule set down in Jackson for the procedural determination of the voluntariness of a confession. This conclusion is buttressed by the fact that the court below also found that the “Georgia rule presents the question to the jury without giving them the judgment of the judge.” Id., at 200, 144 S. E. 2d, at 111. This is the exact procedural device which is proscribed by the rule in Jackson.

IV.

The Supreme Court of Georgia reasoned, however, that Jackson was not applicable because of the safeguards that Georgia’s laws erect around the use of confessions. It pointed out that under Georgia law, before a confession may be admitted it must be corroborated and a showing made that it was freely and voluntarily given. In addition, the trial judge has the power to set aside the verdict of the jury and grant a new trial if, in his opinion, the jury was in error. The court concluded that the rule in Jackson is satisfied by Georgia law and that “It would be difficult to find a more complete satisfaction of the requirement of Jackson than Georgia provides.” Id., at 201, 144 S. E. 2d, at 111. The court also felt that if this not be true, in any event, “the unsound implications of Jackson should not be extended one iota to make it cover cases not explicitly covered by it such as this case where there was no evidence to make any issue of voluntariness. Without an issue there is nothing to try.” Ibid. We cannot agree. There was a definite, clear-cut issue here. Petitioner testified that Doctor Jackson physically abused him while he was in his office and that he was suffering from that abuse when he made the statement, thereby rendering such confession involuntary and the result of coercion. The doctor admitted that he saw petitioner on the floor of his office; that he helped him disrobe and that he knew that petitioner required hospital treatment because of the laceration over his eye but he denied that petitioner was actually abused in his presence. He was unable to state, however, that the state patrolmen did not commit the alleged offenses against petitioner’s person because he was not in the room during the entire time in which the petitioner and the patrolmen were there. In fact, the doctor was quite evasive in his testimony and none of the officers present during the incident were produced as witnesses. Petitioner’s claim of mistreatment, therefore, went uncontradicted as to the officers and was in conflict with the testimony of the physician. Under Jackson, it was for the trial judge to first decide these conflicts and discrepancies. This he failed to do.

Furthermore, Georgia’s highest court, in finding that its rule satisfied the requirements of Jackson, overlooked the fact that the same safeguards offered by the Georgia practice were present in the procedures of New York in Jackson and were rejected by this Court. A constitutional rule was laid down in that case that a jury is not to hear a confession unless and until the trial judge has determined that it was freely and voluntarily given. The rule allows the jury, if it so chooses, to give absolutely no weight to the confession in determining the guilt or innocence of the defendant but it is not for the jury to make the primary determination of vol-untariness. Although the judge need not make formal findings of fact or write an opinion, his conclusion that the confession is voluntary must appear from the record with unmistakable clarity. Here there has been absolutely no ruling on that issue and it is therefore impossible to know whether the judge thought the confession voluntary or if the jury considered it as such in its determination of guilt. Jackson, having been decided June 22, 1964, was binding on the courts of Georgia in this case, it having been tried October 7, 1964. Such rule is, as we have said, a constitutional rule binding upon the States and, under the Supremacy Clause of Article VI of the Constitution, it must be obeyed.

The judgment is, therefore, reversed and cause is remanded for a hearing as provided by Jackson v. Denno, supra, at 393-396.

It is so ordered.

Mr. Justice Black dissents for the reasons stated in his dissent in Jackson v. Denno, 378 U. S., at 401.

       The five questions are:
      “1. Whether petitioner’s Fourteenth Amendment rights were violated by a conviction and sentence to death obtained on the basis of a confession made under inherently coercive circumstances within the doctrine of Fikes v. Alabama, 352 U. S. 191.
      “2. Whether petitioner’s Fourteenth Amendment rights were violated by the failure of the Georgia courts to afford a fair and reliable procedure for determining the voluntariness of his alleged coerced confession in disregard of the principle of Jackson v. Denno, 378 U. S. 368.
      “3. Whether petitioner’s Fourteenth Amendment right to counsel as declared in Escobedo v. Illinois, 378 U. S. 478, was violated by the use of his confession obtained during police interrogation in the absence of counsel, or whether petitioner’s right to counsel was effectively waived.
      “4. Is a conviction constitutional where:
      “(a) local practice pursuant to state statute requires racially segregated tax books and county jurors are selected from such books;
      “(b) the number of Negroes chosen is only 5% of the jurors but they comprise about 20% of the taxpayers; and
      “(c) a Negro criminal defendant’s offer to prove a practice of arbitrary and systematic Negro inclusion or exclusion based on jury lists of the prior ten years is disallowed?
      “5. Where a Negro defendant sentenced to death in Georgia for the rape of a white woman offers to prove that nineteen times as many Negroes as whites have been executed for rape in Georgia in an effort to show that racial discrimination violating the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment produced such a result, may this offer of proof be disallowed?”

       This disposition is in keeping with the teaching of Jackson, supra, that “a determination of . . . voluntariness” should occur initially “in the state courts in accordance with valid state procedures . . . before this Court considers the case on direct review or a petition for habeas corpus is filed in a Federal District Court.” 378 U. S., at 393.


text:
    WHITUS et al. v. GEORGIA.
    No. 650.
    Argued December 7, 1966.
    Decided January 23, 1967.

      Charles Morgan, Jr., and P. Walter Jones argued the cause and filed briefs for petitioners in both cases.

      Fred B. Hand, Jr., Solicitor General of Georgia, and E. Freeman Leverett, Deputy Assistant Attorney General, argued the cause for respondent in both cases. With them on the brief was Arthur K. Bolton, Attorney General.

      Together with No. 253, Whitus et al. v. Georgia, on certiorari to the Court of Appeals of Georgia.

   Mr. Justice Clark

delivered the opinion of the Court.

Once again we are confronted with the question of racial discrimination in the selection of the grand and petit juries which have respectively indicted petitioners and found them guilty of the offense of murder. The claim is that Georgia's system of jury selection resulted in the systematic exclusion of Negroes from both the grand and petit juries in that its law required jury commissioners to select the names of prospective'jurors from the books of the county tax receiver which were maintained on a racially segregated basis. Ga. Code Ann. § 59-106. The grand jury question is raised in both these cases and we consolidated them for argument and do likewise on disposition.

No. 253 is an interlocutory appeal from a judgment denying petitioners’ claim as to the grand jury which in-dieted them. Georgia law authorizes such an appeal, Ga. Code Ann. § 6-701, and it was first perfected to the Supreme Court of Georgia which transferred it to the Georgia Court of Appeals. That court affirmed the denial of the claim of discrimination. 112 Ga. App. 328, 145 S. E. 2d 83. We granted certiorari. 384 U. S. 1000 (1966). In view of the lack of finality of the order in this case, we dismiss the writ in No. 253 as improvidently granted and proceed to dispose of both the grand and petit juries questions in No. 650.

Following affirmance by the Georgia Court of Appeals of the interlocutory appeal, the trial court proceeded to try petitioners’ cases on the merits. After a challenge to the array of petit jurors was denied, petitioners were put to trial and were convicted. The Supreme Court of Georgia affirmed. Whitus v. State, 222 Ga. 103, 149 S. E. 2d 130; Davis v. State, 222 Ga. 114, 149 S. E. 2d 130. We granted certiorari. Post, p. 813. We find that the circumstances here, unexplained by the State, are sufficient to support petitioners’ claims of discrimination and reverse the judgments.

I.

The petitioners have been, here twice before. They were originally convicted in 1960 and the Supreme Court of Georgia affirmed. Davis v. State, 216 Ga. 110, 114 S. E. 2d 877; Whitus v. State, 216 Ga. 284, 116 S. E. 2d 205, cert. denied, 365 U. S. 831 (1961). Thereafter a writ of habeas corpus was filed in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Georgia in which, for the first time, petitioner Whitus attacked the composition of the grand and petit juries. The District Court dismissed the writ and the Court of Appeals affirmed. 299 F. 2d 844. On writ of certiorari, we vacated that judgment and remanded the case to the District Court for a hearing on the claim of discrimination. Whitus v. Balkcom, 370 U. S. 728 (1962). On remand, the District Court again dismissed the petition on the ground that the claim had been waived since it was not raised in the Georgia courts. The Court of Appeals reversed, holding that Negroes had been systematically excluded from both the grand and petit juries. Whitus v. Balkcom, 333 F. 2d 496. Its ruling was based on a finding that 45% of the population of the county was Negro; yet, none had ever served on juries within the memory of the witnesses.

II.

After the Court of Appeals set aside the first convictions, Whitus v. Balkcom, ibid., the Superior Court of Mitchell County directed the jury commissioners for the county to revise the jury list. Georgia law requires that the six commissioners appointed by the Superior Court “select from the books of the tax receiver upright and intelligent citizens to serve as jurors, and shall write the names of the persons so selected on tickets.” Ga. Code Ann. § 59-106. They are also directed to select from this group a sufficient number, not exceeding two-fifths of the whole number, of the most experienced, intelligent, and upright citizens to serve as grand jurors, writing their names on other tickets. The entire group, excepting those selected as grand jurors, constitutes the body of traverse jurors. The tickets on which the names of the traverse jurors are placed are deposited in jury boxes and entered on the minutes of the Superior Court. Ga. Code Ann. §§ 59-108, 59-109. The veniremen are drawn from the jury boxes each term of court and it is from them that the juries are selected.

The State admits that prior to 1965, the tax return sheets furnished by the State Revenue Department, Ga. Code Ann. § 92-6302, were white for white taxpayers and yellow for Negro taxpayers. The 1964 tax digest, and all digests prior to 1964, were made up from these segregated tax returns. Furthermore, the jury lists for each county are required by law to be made up from the tax digest. Ga. Code Ann. § 59-106. The State further admits that the “revised” jury list from which both the grand and petit juries serving in these cases were selected, had been made up by reference to the old jury list, which the Court of Appeals had condemned, and the 1964 tax digest, which had been prepared from the white and yellow tax return sheets of that year. However, the jury commissioners did not use the 1964 tax returns themselves, nor the 1965 tax digest which had not yet been made up. The tax digest appears to have been in one volume but was segregated into two sections — one for white and the other for Negro taxpayers. The Negroes whose names were included in the tax digest were designated by a “(c)” being placed opposite their names as required by Ga. Code Ann. § 92-6307.

The three jury commissioners who appeared as witnesses testified that they were not aware of the letter (c) appearing after the names of the Negroes on the 1964 tax digest; that they never included or excluded anyone on the “revised” jury'list because of race or color; that they placed on the “revised” jury list those persons whom they knew personally from their respective communities; that there were around 600 selected; and that the “revised” list, which the commissioners themselves prepared, had no designation of race upon it.

III.

For over fourscore years it has been federal statutory law, 18 Stat. 336 (1875), 18 U. S. C. §243, and the law of this Court as applied to the States through the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, that a conviction cannot stand if it is based on an indictment of a grand jury or the verdict of a petit jury from which Negroes were excluded by reason of their race. Strauder v. West Virginia, 100 U. S. 303 (1880); see also Pierre v. Louisiana, 306 U. S. 354 (1939). There is no controversy as to the constitutional principle — the question involved is its application to the facts disclosed in this record. It is our province to “analyze the facts in order that the appropriate enforcement of the federal right may be assured,” Norris v. Alabama, 294 U. S. 587, 590 (1935), and while the conclusions reached by the highest court of the State “are entitled to great respect ... it becomes our solemn duty to make independent inquiry and determination of the disputed facts . . . .” Pierre v. Louisiana, supra, at 358. The burden is, of course, on the petitioners to prove the existence of purposeful discrimination, Tarrance v. Florida, 188 U. S. 519 (1903). However, once a prima facie case is made out the burden shifts to the prosecution.

It is undisputed that the “revised” jury list was made up from the 1964 tax digest, the old jury list and the personal acquaintance of the commissioners with persons in their respective communities. It is admitted that the old jury list had been condemned as illegal by the Court of Appeals when it reversed petitioners’ first convictions. It is conceded that 27.1%' of the taxpayers in the county are Negroes; that the county had a population in 1960 of 10,206 people over the age of 21 years, of whom 4,706 were male, with 2,004, or 42.6%, of this latter number being Negroes; that 33 prospective jurors were drawn for grand jury service for the term of court during which petitioners were indicted, three being Negroes, of whom one actually served on the grand jury of 19 persons; that a venire of 90 persons was used for the selection of the petit jury which tried petitioners, of which number at least seven were Negroes; and, that no Negro was accepted on the petit jury.

Furthermore, it is obvious that the 1964 tax digest was required to be made under the same segregated system as were the previous digests, and suffered the same deficiency. Indeed, the State employed the same procedure which it concedes resulted in discrimination in the petitioners’ first trial.

We believe that this proof constituted a prima facie case of purposeful discrimination. While the commissioners testified that no one was included or rejected on the jury list because of race or color this has been held insufficient to overcome the prima facie case. Norris v. Alabama, supra, at 598. The State also insists that the revision of the jury list made evidence of the former practice of exclusion irrelevant. However, as we have seen, this revision was suspect. At the least it was based on the old jury roll which had been specifically condemned by the Court of Appeals and the 1964 tax digest which was suspect because of the system by which it was required to be prepared. The Court of Appeals condemned this same system in reversing the original convictions.

We believe that the circumstances here are akin to those condemned in Avery v. Georgia, 345 U. S. 559 (1953). There the names of the prospective Negro jurors were placed in the jury box on yellow colored tickets. Here the commissioners used the old jury roll which had been condemned by the Court of Appeals and the 1964 tax digest which was required by law to be, and was, maintained on a racially segregated basis. Moreover, it was prepared from the tax returns of Negroes which, at the time, were required to be filed on yellow sheets of paper while the returns of white persons were on white sheets. It is this old “system of selection” condemned by the Court of Appeals “and the resulting danger of abuse which was struck down in Avery . . . .” Williams v. Georgia, 349 U. S. 375, 382 (1955). Nor does the fact that the commissioners selected prospective jurors on the basis of personal acquaintance correct the evil. See Cassell v. Texas, 339 U. S. 282, 289 (1950).

Under such a system the opportunity for discrimination was present and we cannot say on this record that it was not resorted to by the commissioners. Indeed, the disparity between the percentage of Negroes on the tax digest (27.1%) and that of the grand jury venire (9.1%) and the petit jury venire (7.8%) strongly points to this conclusion. Although the system of selection used here had been specifically condemned by the Court of Appeals, the State offered no testimony as to why it was continued on retrial. The State offered no explanation for the disparity between the percentage of Negroes on the tax digest and those on the venires, although the digest must have included the names of large numbers of “upright and intelligent” Negroes as the statutory qualification required. In any event the State failed to offer any testimony indicating that the 27.1%. of Negroes on the tax digest were not fully qualified. The State, therefore, failed to meet the burden of rebutting the petitioners’ prima facie case.

It is contended by petitioners that in the event of a reversal of the decision below they should be set free rather than retried. This contention arises from language used by the Court of Appeals in reversing the original convictions. The court expressed its “present opinion that a period of eight months . . . will be sufficient to afford the State an opportunity to take the necessary steps to reindict and retry the petitioners.” Whitus v. Balkcom, 333 F. 2d, at 510. The theory is that a constitutional procedure was not provided within the eight-month period and that a remand for a new trial would be beyond that period. We are not persuaded by this logic. The proper disposition where a state court conviction is set aside on the ground of jury discrimination is stated in Hill v. Texas, 316 U. S. 400, 406 (1942):

“A prisoner whose conviction is reversed by this Court need not go free if he is in fact guilty, for Texas may indict and try him again by the procedure which conforms to constitutional requirements.”

See also Patton v. Mississippi, 332 U. S. 463, 469 (1947); Eubanks v. Louisiana, 356 U. S. 584, 589 (1958).

The judgments are, therefore, reversed for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.

It is so ordered.

       Women, while qualified to serve, are not compelled to serve and may be excused upon request. Ga. Code Ann. § 59-124.

       While unnecessary to our disposition of the instant case, it is interesting to note the “probability” involved in the situation before the Court.
      The record does not indicate how many Negroes were actually on the “revised” jury list of approximately 600 names. One jury commissioner, however, Said his best estimate was 25% to 30%, which is in close proximity to the 27.1% who were admittedly on the tax digest for 1964. Assuming that 27% of the list was made up of the names of qualified Negroes, the mathematical probability of having seven Negroes on a venire of 90 is .000006. See Finkelstein, The Application of Statistical Decision Theory to the Jury Discrimination Cases, 80 Harv. L. Rev. 338 (1966).