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Self-Crimination Privilege: "Links In The Chain", Judson F. Falknor

Vanderbilt Law Review

"According to their [the prosecution's] statement, a witness can never refuse to answer any question, unless that answer, unconnected with other testimony, would be sufficient to convict him of a crime. This would be rendering the rule almost perfectly worthless. Many links frequently compose that chain of testimony' which is necessary to convict any individual of a crime. It appears to the Court to be the true sense of the rule that no witness is compellable to furnish any one of them against himself...What testimony may be possessed, or is attainable, against any individual, the Court can never know. It …