United States v. John Doe, Inc. I, et al. (481 U.S. 102)
U.S. Supreme Court · decided April 21, 1987 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Citation
- 481 U.S. 102 · 107 S. Ct. 1656
- Decided
- April 21, 1987
- Term
- October Term 1986
- Vote
- 5–3
- Majority author
- Justice Stevens
- Issue area
- Criminal Procedure
- Disposition
- Reversed
- Outcome
- Petitioning party won
- Ideological direction
- Conservative
Opinion excerpt
Justice Stevens delivered the opinion of the Court. In United States v. Sells Engineering, Inc., 463 U. S. 418 (1983), we held that attorneys for the Civil Division of the Justice Department may not automatically obtain disclosure of grand jury materials for use in a civil suit, but must instead seek a court order of disclosure, available upon a showing of “particularized need.” We explicitly left open the “issue concerning continued use of grand jury materials, in the civil phase of a dispute, by an attorney who himself conducted the criminal prosecution.” Id., at 431, n. 16. Today, we decide that open question. In addition, for the first time, we review a concrete application of the “particularized need” standard to a request for disclosure to Government attorneys. I In March 1982, attorneys in the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice were authorized to conduct a grand jury investigation of three American corporations suspected of conspiring to fix the price of tallow being sold to a foreign government and financed by the Department of State’s Agency for International Development. After subpoenaing thousands of documents from the three corporate respondents, and taking the testimony of numerous witnesses, including the five individual respondents, the Department of Justice conferred with some of respondents’ attorneys and concluded that although respondents had…
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