Material witness
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A material witness (in US law) is a person with information alleged to be material concerning a criminal proceeding. The authority to detain material witnesses dates to the First Judiciary Act of 1789, but the Bail Reform Act of 1984 most recently amended the text of the statute, and it is now codified at . The most recent version allows material witnesses to be held to ensure the giving of their testimony in criminal proceedings or to a grand jury. Since September 11, 2001, the U.S. has used the material witness statute to detain suspects without charge for indefinite periods of time, often under the rubric of securing grand-jury testimony. This use of the statute is controversial and is currently under judicial review.
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[edit] Text of the Statute
, commonly referred to as the "material witness statute," provides as follows:
If it appears from an affidavit filed by a party that the testimony of a person is material in a criminal proceeding, and if it is shown that it may become impracticable to secure the presence of the person by subpoena, a judicial officer may order the arrest of the person and treat the person in accordance with the provisions of section of this title. No material witness may be detained because of inability to comply with any condition of release if the testimony of such witness can adequately be secured by deposition, and if further detention is not necessary to prevent a failure of justice. Release of a material witness may be delayed for a reasonable period of time until the deposition of the witness can be taken pursuant to the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure.
[edit] Introduction
A material witness is an individual who contains information "material" to a criminal proceeding. With the authority of , the United States government can seek a warrant from a judicial officer in order to arrest a material witness. To do so, a United States official must file an affidavit with the judicial officer alleging that (1) the individual has material information to the criminal proceeding and (2) it would be "impracticable to secure the presence of the person by subpoena."
[edit] "a criminal proceeding"
Although there has been much legal debate about the scope of the material witness statute, it has been clear since the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in Bacon v. United States, 449 F.2d 933 (9th Cir. 1971), that the phrase "a criminal proceeding" from the material witness statute includes both trials (uncontroversially) and grand jury investigations. Thus, the ability to arrest material witnesses under the statute extends to the ability to arrest those with information material to a grand jury investigation (assuming the showing of impracticability is also made). The Supreme Court has not had a chance to rule on this statutory issue.
[edit] September 11 Controversy
After September 11, 2001, the United States government admitted to a campaign of aggressive detention, by whatever means possible, of those potentially involved in the attacks on the United States.[1] This included the use of the material witness statute to detain suspects, as opposed to witnesses. Many of those detained as material witneses were detained as witnesses to grand jury proceedings.[2] This caused controversy for several reasons. Primarily, critics saw the government's use of the material witness statute to detain suspects as an evasion of the Fourth Amendment which provides some protections to criminal suspects that were seemingly ignored in the arrests of the post-September 11 material witness detainees.Secondarily, legal critics took issue anew with the application of the material witness statute to grand jury proceedings. Seemingly in response to this controversy, and with the intent of alleviating the concerns over such use of the material witness statute, Senator Patrick Leahy proposed A Bill to Amend the Material Witness Statute to Strengthen Procedural Safeguards, and for Other Purposes, S 1739 § 1. The legislation is currently pending before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
