What to do? Your brother is serving a jail sentence for aggravated sexual assault on his daughter. What if you confess to the crime and tell the Court your brother's conviction was a mistake you want to rectify? You want to admit your wrongdoing and save your brother from an unjust sentence. To carry out the plan you send twenty letters to various officials saying you committed the crime and your brother is innocent. Then the Court has to let him out doesn't it? In this case, Mr. Haner's brother (X) gave it a try. Does it work?

Well, not quite. At the hearing on Mr. Haner's motion for a new trial in light of this newly discovered evidence, X's letters were offered as evidence. They were rejected as inadmissible hearsay (an out of court statement offered to prove the truth.) When X was called to testify under oath, he asked the State's Attorney to grant him immunity from prosecution for what he might say. The State's Attorney refused. X then asserted his fifth amendment privilege not to testify and asked the Court to grant him immunity because the State's Attorney was obstructing justice.

The trial court refused. On appeal, the Vermont Supreme Court, in a unanimous decision, agreed. It gave two main reasons:

(1) State's Attorneys, who are part of the executive branch, have the sole power to grant immunity. Courts are a separate branch of government empowered to decide cases brought there. Absent prosecutorial misconduct a court should not help either the state or the defense – it is impartial. In rare cases, the Vermont Supreme Court has granted a defendant immunity. For example, sex offenders are routinely required to admit other offenses during state mandated rehabilitation programs. Without a grant of immunity the offender could never complete a rehabilitation program and might remain in jail.

(2) Neither the police who investigated Mr. Haner's crime, the trial judge, or the Supreme Court Justices believed X was telling the truth. When Mr. Haner committed the crime in his home, there was no indication that X was even there.

X (and Mr. Haner?) had cool plan, but maybe judges aren't as stupid as some people think. State v. Harold Haner, Sr. 2007 Vt. 49