Whether the Fifth Amendment and Sixth Amendment right to compulsory process require the government to grant use immunity to a defense witness whose exculpatory testimony is essential to the defendant's case, or whether the government retains discretion to withhold immunity based on legitimate prosecutorial interests even when doing so effectively prevents the defendant from presenting a complete defense

No question identified. : Amendment right to a fair trial. More specifically, this case concerns the circumstances under which the need for a defense witness’s exculpatory testimony may warrant granting use immunity for that testimony, where without immunity the government will be able to block the defense witness from testifying—and exonerating the defendant—by threatening to prosecute him, too. 1. This case squarely presents a question that has divided the courts of appeals. Mr. Munera-Gomez was charged with drug offenses and raised an entrapment defense, but the key witness whose testimony he needed could not testify without a grant of use immunity. In August 2019, a confidential source of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) approached Mr. Munera-Gomez in a bar. App. 2. After the confidential source pressured Mr. Munera-Gomez on several occasions, Mr. MuneraGomez agreed to conduct a drug transaction with the confidential source and others who turned out to be undercover DEA agents, and he was arrested. App. 3, 5-6. The confidential source later testified that he had approached Mr. MuneraGomez because he recognized his nickname, “Pikachu,” as belonging to someone who had supplied cocaine to one of the confidential source’s former business partners, Fabio Quijano, in 2016 and 2017. App. 3, 6. When interviewed, however, Quijano confirmed that he knew Mr. Munera-Gomez but denied that Mr. Munera-Gomez conducted drug transactions with him. But Quijano was under indictment for other offenses he committed between 2018 and 2020, App. 7, so he was likely to invoke the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination if called to testify. Mr. Munera-Gomez therefore requested use immunity for Quijano. After the government refused to confer this immunity, Mr. Munera-Gomez requested that the district court order the government to do so. The district court denied Mr. Munera-Gomez’s request at the final pretrial conference, reasoning that there was no evidence that the government was withholding immunity “in an attempt to distort the factfinding process.” App. 7. At trial, Mr. Munera-Gomez conceded the underlying offense conduct, but he raised an entrapment defense. App. 7. After a four-day jury trial, Mr. Munera-Gomez was convicted of one count of attempting to possess with intent to distribute five kilograms or more of cocaine and was sentenced to 120 months of imprisonment. App. 2, 7-8. On appeal, Mr. Munera-Gomez argued, among other things, that the district court committed constitutional error in failing to order the government to grant Quijano use immunity. See App. 8. Mr. Munera-Gomez argued that Quijano’s testimony would have directly contradicted the confidential source’s testimony with respect to Mr. Munera-Gomez’s predisposition (or lack thereof) to engage in drug trafficking, a key aspect of the entrapment defense. App. 8. The court of appeals affirmed. Relevant here, it rejected Mr. Munera-Gomez’s use-immunity argument, reasoning that, in the First Circuit, a “district court may circumvent the government’s discretionary call [on providing immunity] only in the rare circumstance that a prosecutor abuses his or her discretion by intentionally attempting to distort the fact-finding process.” App. 9 (citation, alteration, and quotation marks omitted). Although the First Circuit acknowledged that its precedent on use immunity takes a narrower view of defendants’ due process rights than the Ninth Circuit’s precedent, App. 11 n.3, the court concluded that the government’s “stated reason for refusing to give Quijano use immunity -avoiding potential obstacles to Quijano’s prosecution on pending federal charges -[was] exactly the type of rationale that [the court has] continuously recognized as fending off a claim of prosecutorial misconduct,” App. 10. The First Circuit noted that it had “repeatedly rejected” the “effective defense” theory—a theory that “posits that a strong need for exculpatory testimony can override e