## Facts

- Two federal prisoners had pleaded guilty to separate, unrelated bank robberies.
- The government called them as witnesses at the jury trial of a third defendant charged with bank robbery.
- Each witness refused to testify, invoking the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination.
- The government obtained statutory immunity under 18 U.S.C. § 6002, and the trial court ordered the witnesses to answer.
- Despite immunity and the court’s order, both witnesses persisted in refusing to answer questions in open court, in the presence of the judge and jury, interrupting the trial.
- The district judge summarily adjudged each witness in criminal contempt under Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 42(a) and imposed sentences.

## Issues

1. Whether a district court may use Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 42(a) to summarily punish, as criminal contempt, immunized witnesses who refuse to testify in open court during an ongoing jury trial after a direct order to answer.
2. Whether such refusals must instead be addressed under Rule 42(b), which requires notice and a hearing.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court reversed the court of appeals and upheld the contempt adjudications.
- The Court held that Rule 42(a) permitted summary punishment because the judge personally saw and heard the refusals in the court’s actual presence.
- The Court treated the refusals, after immunity and a lawful order, as intentional obstruction that disrupted the progress of an ongoing trial.
- The Court distinguished prior precedent limiting summary contempt for refusals before a grand jury, reasoning that delay is more tolerable in that setting than in a jury trial.

## Legal Principles

- Rule 42(a) authorizes summary criminal contempt when the judge certifies that the contemptuous conduct was seen or heard by the judge and occurred in the court’s actual presence.
- A deliberate, in-court refusal to testify, after statutory immunity removes a valid Fifth Amendment basis and after a direct judicial order to answer, may constitute criminal contempt punishable summarily when it obstructs an ongoing trial.
- The availability of summary contempt turns in part on the immediacy of the obstruction and the need to maintain the orderly conduct of a jury trial; greater procedural formality may be required when time pressures and disruption are less acute.

## Conclusion

The Court held that a witness’s deliberate refusal to testify in open court during a jury trial—after immunity and an order to answer—may be punished summarily as criminal contempt under Rule 42(a) because the conduct occurs in the judge’s presence and directly disrupts trial proceedings.


United States v. Wilson, 421 U.S. 309 (1975)