Description: Hays, Kansas criminal defense lawyer represented the defendant on assault and battery charges.

This case arises from the State's interlocutory appeal in Christopher Adams' criminal case. Adams faces multiple counts of battery based on allegations that he punched two men and pushed his girlfriend, Stephanie Lang, outside a bar. When questioned at the scene, Lang identified Adams as the attacker of a victim who was knocked unconscious and suffered significant injuries. But when called to testify at Adams' preliminary hearing, Lang claimed she did not remember what happened. Based on her inconsistent statements, the State charged Lang with alternative counts of perjury and interference with law enforcement and warned it would charge her with perjury again if she testified the same way at Adams' trial. Before Adams' trial, Lang asserted the Fifth Amendment privilege, citing a risk of incrimination in her pending perjury case and the potential she could face a new charge of perjury if she testified the same way at Adams'
trial. Despite the State offering Lang statutory use and derivative use immunity-which would make her trial testimony and any evidence derived from it inadmissible in the pending perjury case-the district court found she could still invoke the Fifth Amendment privilege because the State's grant of immunity would not protect her from a new perjury charge.

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Legal issue Can a witness invoke the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination to avoid testifying based on the risk of a future perjury charge?

Key Phrases - Fifth Amendment privilege - Perjury prosecution - Use and derivative use immunity - State's interlocutory appeal - Judicial dissent analysis

Outcome: The decisions of the district court and the Court of Appeals are reversed and the matter remanded to the district court with directions to compel Lang to testify in Adams' trial under the State's grant of immunity.

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