United States v. Wong

In United States v. Wong, 431 U.S. 174 (1977), the Supreme Court addressed, as a constitutional question, the analogous issue that is before us today as a statutory question. In that case, the defendant, who was suspected of involvement in illegal gambling, was actually called to the grand jury. 431 U.S. at 175. She was given grand jury and Miranda warnings, then lied under oath to the grand jury, and was later indicted for perjury. Like Mr. Martinez, she attempted to suppress her grand jury statement. She said that she did not speak English well enough to understand her Fifth Amendment rights or the warnings she had been given. Id. at 176. The Supreme Court accepted the defendant's proposition that she was, in effect, never warned of her legal rights. Id. at 177. She claimed that her grand jury testimony, "even if knowingly false, was inadmissible against her as having been obtained in violation of the constitutional privilege" against self-incrimination. Id. She also argued that, absent those constitutional warnings, "a witness is placed in the dilemma of engaging in either self-incrimination or perjury, a situation so inherently unfair as to require suppression of perjured testimony." Id.