Simmons v. United States
Is it still good law? What later courts have actually done to this case.
Status
6,676 later cases cite Simmons v. United States; 210 of those citations sat close to treatment language and were flagged for reading, and all of them have been read. Citations that did not sit near treatment language were not flagged and were not read one by one, so a court that weakened this case without using any of that language would not appear here.
Relying on Simmons v. United States?
This page shows what later courts did to it. Ask about your specific facts and see whether it still carries your argument, with citations you can check.
Treatments
Limited
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The Supreme Court preserved Simmons's result but confined its rights-tension rationale and refused to give it the broader reach urged in a challenge to a unitary capital trial.
McGautha v. California · Supreme Court of the United States · filed
While we have no occasion to question the soundness of the result in Simmons and do not do so, to the extent that its rationale was based on a “tension” between constitutional rights and the policies behind them, the validity of that reasoning must now be regarded as open to question, and it certainly cannot be given the broad thrust which is attributed to it by Crampton in the present case.
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The Fifth Circuit declined to extend Simmons's protection to independently offered testimony from third-party witnesses at a suppression hearing.
United States v. Boruff · Fifth Circuit · filed
Simmons rests on the premise that it is “intolerable” for a defendant to be forced to surrender “one constitutional right”— his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination — “in order to assert another”— his Fourth Amendment right not to be subject to unreasonable searches and seizures. A defendant’s Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, however, like other constitutional rights, is “a purely personal right” that cannot be vicariously asserted. ... Boruff’s Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination is, therefore, not implicated when other individuals testify against him.
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The Eleventh Circuit declined to extend Simmons to protect suppression-hearing testimony when the asserted competing rights were attorney-client privilege and protection from later grand-jury use.
In re Federal Grand Jury Proceedings · Eleventh Circuit · filed
Second, this circuit has never extended Simmons to situations involving the exclusion of prior testimony when competing rights, whether constitutional or statutory, are at issue. ... Given the narrow reading the Supreme Court has given its own precedent, we decline to read Simmons broadly enough to apply to the case at hand. Because intervenors' Simmons argument fails, they have not established that they are likely to prevail on the merits of their appeal.
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Does this case still carry your argument?
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