The guy happened to be a photographer, but his being subpoenaed and held in contempt had to do with him refusing to testify against his corrupt DEA brother. He “pled the Fifth” to avoid, in his own words, testifying against his brother, which is not what the 5th Amendment protects. His lawyer claimed he was pleading the 5th to prevent accidentally perjuring himself, but there’s no such thing as accidentally perjuring oneself. Prosecutors have to prove you willfully and knowingly told a falsehood.
This is just someone paying the cost they have to pay to protect their criminal brother.
> Prosecutors have to prove you willfully and knowingly told a falsehood.
No, they have to make someone else believe you did. How else would this burden of proof be lifted? some form of brain scan that can just say "yeah, he willfully did it!"? no, they put fourth some motive/set of circumstances, and if a bunch of people believe the spin, its "proved"
Yes I do think that we (society writ large, acting through the mechanism known as “a democratically elected government”) should be able to compel people to face our justice system.
> It is worth noting that the DOJ defines perjury as a declarant “willfully” making a false statement, that the declarant believed that what they were saying was untrue, and that the statement was related to a material fact. Misremembering a detail is not, in and of itself, perjury.
The prosecutors and judges have a lot of leeway with assuming "willfully". Plenty of people have been convicted because a prosecutor wanted to apply pressure / make an example and choose to believe an incorrect date was a willful lie.
Something about this smells like a bad attorney. Especially the part where he didn’t know that he was free until his card stopped working. But who knows, and it doesn’t matter anyway since the legitimacy of the court system is supposed to rely on common ideas of justice rather than process. If all we have from courts is process, it’s no longer justice, only bureaucratic oppression.
The standard other exemptions are doctor-patient, attorney-client, religious leader-religious person, and spousal confidentiality laws. Some, but not all, states also shield journalist's sources. In the last case, in states without a shield law, going to jail to protect a source's identity is considered a professional honor.
Yes. I mean, that's the whole point of that part of the fifth amendment. There would be no need for an explicit carveout of self-incrimination if the government didn't have the general ability to compel witnesses to testify.
He doesn't have the right to plead the 5th to avoid testifying against anyone but himself or his spouse, so his attempts to plead the 5th were just nonsense. Making an issue now seems to me like the "justice" connected criminals he was protecting by his contempt are somehow more worthy of rights than everyone they have used this tool on.
You have the right to remain silent during questioning outside court. By the way have you seen how far this has degraded? You can't remain silent until you say you are remaining silent explicitly by claiming this right.
But, I'm not sure you have the right to not speak in court when called to testify.
> He doesn't have the right to plead the 5th to avoid testifying against anyone but himself or his spouse, so his attempts to plead the 5th were just nonsense
That’s not true, you can invoke the Fifth anytime testimony might incriminate you, regardless of who it is directly against. If this is founded (which may itself be contested if it isn’t directly against yourself), you can’t be compelled to testify unless the potential for self-incrimination is neutralized by immunity.
However, in this case there was no real self-incrimination concern.
No, the "right to remain silent" is absolute. It's a refusal to testify to anything at all. The grounds of self-incrimination are there, but if nobody knows what you'll be asked or how you'll answer, those grounds are sort of immaterial.
Constitutionally, no, the right referenced by that phrase in, e.g., the Miranda warnings is the 5th Amendment right against self-incrimination (“No person... shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself”).
The belief that a more general “right to remain silent” exists may be a moral belief of some people, but, it is not a legal right, and judges can and will conduct questioning to assess if the legal right applies.
You can’t just say you are invoking the 5th and refuse to testify. If pressed, you actually have to get up there and invoke it — possibly to every question if needed.
The fear of perjury is an interesting twist, though. And the removal of immunity may affect things too.
(Although in your own trial you have the right to not testify, that doesn’t apply here).
> The fear of perjury is an interesting twist, though.
Its a nice try, but the right not to testify against yourself is not a right not to testify in a situation in which you might be tempted to choose (perjury not being a crime you can connit accidentally) to commit a crime.
What about the belief that you can't selectively invoke it? That if you break that silence then they can compel you to answer everything else from that point on? How's that work?
They might as well abolish this right anyway. As if every device we ever touch won't testify against us in the first place.
It doesn't. When has it in the past 50 years? (There were some violations during the 60s and earlier). You might find a counter example with some CIA involvement or something.
Like you cannot walk into a bank with a gun yelling 5th amendment and not go to jail. It's not blanket. It protects you from statements of self incrimination.
This is just someone paying the cost they have to pay to protect their criminal brother.
Seems like due process working well AFAICT.