In Spevack v. Klein, 385 U.S. 511 (1967), an attorney facing disciplinary proceedings in New York was disbarred, as this state's law then permitted, solely because he refused to honor a subpoena for records and to testify at the judicial inquiry, asserting his Fifth Amendment privilege. Noting that "the threat of disbarment and the loss of professional standing, professional reputation, and of livelihood are powerful forms of compulsion to make a lawyer relinquish the privilege," the Court reversed the decision of the Court of Appeals upholding Spevack's disbarment, finding that a disbarment on that basis violated the Fifth Amendment. (Id. at 516; see also Garrity v. New Jersey, 385 US 493 (1967) statements made by police officers under investigation by state attorney general's office could not be used against them in criminal proceeding because the officers were told that if they did not answer them without grant of immunity they were subject to removal from office.) As the New York Court of Appeals has explained, in Spevack the Supreme Court viewed "the threat of disbarment for the mere exercise of the privilege . . . as an unconstitutional compulsion to waive the privilege without a coextensive protection against the ultimate use of those statements in a criminal proceeding." (Matter of Anonymous Attorneys, 41 NY2d 506, 511, 362 NE2d 592, 393 NYS2d 961 (1977) Thus, it is clear that when suspension or disbarment can flow automatically from exercise of an attorney's Fifth Amendment right, the attorney can be compelled to testify only "when assurance is made that the statements cannot be used in a related criminal action." (Id.)