Is there anything to protect against parallel construction? Bob mentions he was selling drugs to a guy near the scene of the crime. A police officer then finds out who the buyer was, and gets him to testify to bring drug charges against Bob. Or: During the following weeks, a police officer just happens to be in the same place at the same time of night every week, and eventually catches one of Bob's future transactions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witness_immunity seems to be the reference. Seems to cover the exact issue: "In the United States, the prosecution may grant immunity in one of two forms. Transactional immunity, colloquially known as "blanket" or "total" immunity, completely protects the witness from future prosecution for crimes related to his or her testimony. Use and derivative use immunity prevents the prosecution only from using the witness's own testimony or any evidence derived from the testimony against the witness. However, if the prosecutor acquires evidence substantiating the crime independently of the witness's testimony, the witness may then be prosecuted."
There is specific immunity and blanket immunity. Specific immunity is protection from prosecution for a specified offense. Blanket immunity is protection from prosecution for any offense related to a given court case.
Immunity, like double jeopardy, is limited to a given court. For example a state prosecutor can grant immunity in exchange for testimony, but in the case of overlap with federal law the witness can still be prosecuted in a federal court.
Could you have committed an unrelated murder, and by disclosing this murder in your testimony, become immune to conviction of it?
If that is not how immunity works, then how can the government force anyone to testify? The government does not know what (unrelated) crimes I may have to confess to in order to give truthful testimony on the matter in question.
i'm not even sure what the answer to this is other than to say -- it's a completely contrived example and there's no way you would answer such a question let alone be asked about it. getting on the stand isn't some grand fishing expedition -- you're asked relevant questions and if they're not relevant then your lawyer / opposing lawyer is going to challenge relevance
If you explicitly have immunity for all things you reveal in the course of the questioning (and that immunity applies to the crimes revealed, not just that particular testimony), then I don’t see why you wouldn’t reveal everything you can, whether asked or not. Any way you could possibly shoehorn “I murdered a guy in 2012” into an answer, you should, if that were how the immunity worked.
Does that include false testimony? If so, why couldn't Manning employ the Regan/Poindexter tactic... I don't recall?
Or can the immunity be rescinded if the testimony doesn't produce the answers the prosecution wants?
