In Re a Grand Jury Subpoena Served Upon Kinoy

326 F. Supp. 400, 1970 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 9021
CourtDistrict Court, S.D. New York
DecidedDecember 28, 1970
DocketM-11-188
StatusPublished
Cited by31 cases

This text of 326 F. Supp. 400 (In Re a Grand Jury Subpoena Served Upon Kinoy) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, S.D. New York primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
In Re a Grand Jury Subpoena Served Upon Kinoy, 326 F. Supp. 400, 1970 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 9021 (S.D.N.Y. 1970).

Opinion

OPINION

FRANKEL, District Judge.

Arthur Kinoy is a well-known practitioner and professor of law. He has been subpoenaed to appear before a grand jury inquiring into possible violations of 18 U.S.C. § 1071, which proscribes concealment of persons subject to arrest warrants or similar process. 1 He says, and the United States Attorney confirms, that the grand jury seeks to question him concerning the whereabouts of his daughter Joanne, who, according to government counsel, “is known to have been closely acquainted with an individual believed upon reliable information to have recently harbored and concealed from arrest a fugitive defendant named in a pending indictment in this District.” 2 Mr. Kinoy moves to quash the subpoena contending for a variety of reasons that he may not lawfully be required to appear before the grand jury. This is, of course, an extreme position; with the rarest of possible exceptions, nobody is immune from such appearances whether or not particular questions put by the grand jury to the witness who has appeared may give rise to valid claims of privilege. Blair v. United States, 250 U.S. 273, 281, 39 S.Ct. 468, 63 L.Ed. 979 (1919); United States v. Bryan, 339 U.S. 323, 331, 70 S.Ct. 724, 94 L.Ed. 884 (1950); cf. United States v. Fortunato, 402 F.2d 79, 82 (2d Cir. 1968). Having examined Mr. Kinoy’s extraordinary claim, the court concludes that it cannot be sustained.

1. Mr. Kinoy points out, and the court is aware, that he has performed notable service for various individuals and groups seeking enforcement of federal civil rights or espousing departures from political orthodoxy. Because of this, he says, invoking the recent decision of the Ninth Circuit in Caldwell v. United States, 434 F.2d 1081 (1970), cert. granted 402 U.S. 942, 91 S.Ct. 1616, 29 L.Ed.2d 109, his very appearance before a grand jury will have a “chilling effect” upon First Amendment rights in that “it will cause these groups to lose confidence” in him “whether or not [he] is actually forced to betray legal confidences.” 3 This breaks a long bow. The Caldwell case, reaching borders still to be tested, concerns the special situation of a journalist with unique access to the Black Panther Party, where the journalist was subpoenaed before a grand jury “engaged in a general investigation of the Black Panthers and the possibility that they are engaged in criminal activities contrary to federal law.” 434 F.2d *402 at 1082. The Ninth Circuit, when it held Caldwell entitled not to appear before the grand jury, limited its result sharply to cases like that of the journalist before it, cautioning that eases of other journalists, affecting groups other than the Black Panthers, could well call for different treatment. Id. at 1090.

The distinctions between that ease and this one are patent. Unlike the journalist, Mr. Kinoy as an attorney is not merely permitted, but bound, to preserve confidences of his clients, before the grand jury and elsewhere. Nothing in the First Amendment and nothing shown here indicates a need for totally immunizing him against grand jury subpoenas.

Mr. Kinoy and attorneys associated with him have filed reply affidavits (and have offered to supplement these with live testimony) attesting that their “unpopular clients” rely heavily upon counsel to safeguard their confidential communications. But this has been thought generally to be the way with clients, even popular ones, and the attorney-client privilege embodies the thought. Lawyers, of all people, should be supposed competent to enforce in the grand jury room their legitimate duties of confidentiality. They are obliged at the same time, not less than others, to give their non-privileged knowledge to the grand jury.

If lawyers for unpopular groups are automatically exempted from grand jury appearances, logic could compel far more sweeping, and intolerable, exemptions. Anyone who is not a lawyer, but has learned confidential things from such organizations, would presumably cause “chills” when he went before the grand jury. The concern would have more solid basis than it has here because the non-lawyer could not normally invoke a privilege to protect his informants. But there is no right on that basis not to appear, and Mr. Kinoy’s case in this respect is no better than that of anyone else.

It is not to be questioned, of course, that any kind of exertion of governmental power against people or groups exercising First Amendment freedoms could exceed the limits of constitutionality. This could be true of regulation in the labor-management field, cf., Oklahoma Press Pub. Co. v. Walling, 327 U.S. 186, 66 S.Ct. 494, 90 L.Ed. 614 (1946); National Labor Relations Board v. Virginia Power Co., 314 U.S. 469, 62 S.Ct. 344, 86 L.Ed. 348 (1941); or of the taxing power, cf., Grosjean v. American Press Co., 297 U.S. 233, 56 S.Ct. 444, 80 L.Ed. 660 (1936); Speiser v. Randall, 357 U.S. 513, 78 S.Ct. 1332, 2 L.Ed.2d 1460 (1958); and it could undoubtedly turn out to be the case if the powers of grand juries were perverted or carried to excess. This does not imply, however, that groups, even unpopular groups, exercising First Amendment rights are totally exempt from government action. There has been a number of cases where the power of investigatory agencies has been limited because of the effects on First Amendment freedoms, see, e. g., Gibson v. Florida Legislative Investigation Committee, 372 U.S. 539, 83 S.Ct. 889, 9 L.Ed.2d 929 (1963); cf., N. A. A. C. P. v. Alabama ex rel. Patterson, 357 U.S. 449, 78 S.Ct. 1163, 2 L.Ed.2d 1488 (1958). Giving the fullest possible reading to what Mr. Kinoy says and offers to prove about a “chilling effect” in this case, the relation between the grand jury investigation and the infringement of First Amendment rights is so tangential and indirect that it cannot possibly justify forbidding the grand jury from even calling Mr. Kinoy as a witness. The in-j vestigation of the grand jury is designed! to elicit from this witness narrow and j clearly defined information, relating to! a specific violation of law, from a person \ likely to have the information, and in circumstances where “less drastic” means for producing it have failed.

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Bluebook (online)
326 F. Supp. 400, 1970 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 9021, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/in-re-a-grand-jury-subpoena-served-upon-kinoy-nysd-1970.