Record
Court opinion
1968-01-29
CourtListener (Free Law Project), text of the opinion of the Supreme Court of the United States
Marchetti v. United States, 390 U.S. 39 (1968)
Supreme Court decision of January 29, 1968 holding that a proper claim of the Fifth Amendment privilege is a complete defense to prosecution for failing to register and pay the federal occupational tax on wagering.
- 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. 39 (1968), No. 2
- 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. 2, reargued October 10, 1967. Marchetti was convicted in the District of Connecticut under indictments charging violations of the federal wagering tax statutes, including conspiracy to evade the annual occupational tax.
The Court said it granted review “to consider whether Kahriger and Lewis still have vitality”, referring to its earlier wagering-tax decisions in United States v. Kahriger and Lewis v. United States. It held that the privilege against self-incrimination was a complete defense to prosecution for failure to register and to pay the occupational tax: “we hold only that those who properly assert the constitutional privilege as to these provisions may not be criminally punished for failure to comply with their requirements.” (390 U.S. at 61.) The judgment was reversed.
The companion case, Grosso v. United States, decided the same day, concerns the excise tax on wagers. The 1951 wagering-tax provisions are filed separately.