JENCKS ACT 71 Stat. 595 (1957)

In Jencks v. United States, in June 1957, the Supreme Court, speaking through Justice william j. brennan, reversed the conviction of a labor leader, Clinton E. Jencks, charged with perjury for falsely swearing he was not a communist. The five-man majority held that reports filed by FBI-paid informants alleging Jencks's participation in Communist party activities should have been available to his counsel when requested. The majority ruled that the prosecution must either disclose to the defense statements made by government witnesses or drop the case.

Justice tom c. clark wrote a near-inflammatory dissent contending that unless Congress nullified the decision, "those intelligence agencies of our government engaged in law enforcement may as well close up shop." The decision, he warned, would result in a "Roman holiday" for criminals to "rummage" through secret files. Congress seized upon Clark's dissent and a Jencks Act was quickly passed, amending the United States Code. In sharply restricting the Court's decision, the measure provided that a defendant in a criminal case could, following testimony by a government witness, request disclosure of a pretrial statement made by that witness, so long as the statement was written and signed by the witness or was a transcription of an oral statement made at the time the statement was given. Other requested material was to be screened by the trial judge for relevance, with the judge given the right to delete unrelated matters. In subsequent challenges, raised in Rosenberg v. United States (1959) and Palermo v. United States (1959), the Justices upheld the law, carefully conforming to its provisions.

Paul L. Murphy
(1986)

Bibliography

Note 1958 The Jencks Legislation: Problems in Prospect. Yale Law Journal 67:674–699.