Record
Court opinion
1968-01-29
CourtListener (Free Law Project), text of the opinion of the Supreme Court of the United States
Grosso v. United States, 390 U.S. 62 (1968)
Supreme Court decision of January 29, 1968, companion to Marchetti, holding that a claim of the Fifth Amendment privilege precludes a criminal conviction for failing to pay the federal excise tax on wagers.
- Date
- 1968-01-29
- Kind
- court-opinion
- Source
- CourtListener (Free Law Project), text of the opinion of the Supreme Court of the United States
- Retrieved
- 2026-10-12
- Docket
- 390 U.S. 62 (1968), No. 12
- Rights
- Opinion of the Supreme Court of the United States, a federal work in the public domain under 17 U.S.C. § 105. CourtListener (Free Law Project) hosts the text; it is not the source institution.
Decided January 29, 1968; No. 12. Grosso was convicted for failure to pay the federal excise tax on wagers. The Court held that he was entitled to assert the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination as a defense, and reversed the Court of Appeals.
The holding is limited: “we hold only that such a claim of privilege precludes a criminal conviction premised on failure to pay the tax.” (390 U.S. at 70.) The opinion does not extinguish liability for the tax itself.
The dissent states that the decision strikes down the statutory scheme of taxes on wagers and on the occupation of gambling and “of necessity overrules United States v. Kahriger”. That is the dissent’s view, not the Court’s holding. Marchetti v. United States, decided the same day, and the 1951 wagering-tax provisions are filed separately.