What is the legal basis for refusing to answer questions from a grand jury?

In this case, appellant acknowledges that his fear of reprisal does not provide a legal basis for declining to answer the grand jury's questions, see Piemonte v.

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A district judge's determination whether a civil contempt sanction has lost any realistic possibility of having a coercive effect is inevitably far more speculative than his resolution of traditional factual issues. Since a prediction is involved and since that prediction concerns such uncertain matters as the likely effect of continued confinement upon a particular individual, we think a district judge has virtually unreviewable discretion both as to the procedure he will use to reach his conclusion, ² and as to the merits of his conclusion. See Soobzokov v. CBS, Inc., supra, 642 F.2d at 31 ("Ordinarily, it is for the district judge to determine when and if the borderline between coercion and punishment has been reached."); see also In re Grand Jury Investigation (Braun), supra. We have located no decision of a court of appeals requiring a district court to take testimony from a contemnor on the issue of the utility of continued confinement, ³ or rejecting a district court's conclusion that such confinement is warranted. ⁴