Marchetti v. United States

In Marchetti v. United States (1968) 390 U.S. 39, the defendant was convicted in the United States District Court for willfully failing to register and pay an occupational tax imposed on those engaging in the business of accepting wagers. After conviction, he pursued an appeal which included a contention that the statutory obligation to register and to pay the tax violated his constitutional privilege against self-incrimination. Although the circuit court of appeals affirmed, the high court reversed, holding that the registration and tax provisions of the statute could be relied upon to punish a person who defended his failure to comply therewith based upon an assertion of his privilege. In doing so, as pertinent here, it said in passing that "we see no reason to suppose that the force of the constitutional prohibition is diminished merely because confession of a guilty purpose precedes the act which it is subsequently employed to evidence." ( Id. at p. 54 19 L.Ed.2d at p. 901, italics added.) In reaching its decision, Marchetti was required to deal with two earlier decisions, United States v. Kahriger (1953) 345 U.S. 22, and Lewis v. United States (1955) 348 U.S. 419. Both Kahriger and Lewis had dismissed contentions that the wagering tax statutes violated the gambler's privilege against self-incrimination. In overruling those cases, the Marchetti court said, "There is a second, and more fundamental, deficiency in the reasoning of Kahriger and Lewis. Its linchpin is plainly the premise that the privilege is entirely inapplicable to prospective acts; for this the Court in Kahriger could vouch as authority only a generalization at 8 Wigmore, Evidence 2259c (3d ed 1940). We see no warrant for so rigorous a constraint upon the constitutional privilege. History, to be sure, offers no ready illustrations of the privilege's application to prospective acts, but the occasions on which such claims might appropriately have been made must necessarily have been very infrequent." ( Marchetti v. United States, supra, 390 U.S. 39.)