Former PA Chairman Samson Pleads Fifth
David Samson says he will not answer questions of the special committee investigating the George Washington Bridge lane closures, asserting his Fifth Amendment rights. For more New Jersey news,...
By: NJTV News
Follow this link:
NATIONAL
November 7, 2003 | John J. Goldman, Times Staff Writer
The captain of the Staten Island ferry that crashed into a pier last month, killing 10 people, finally met with investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board on Thursday, but would give only his name and age. NTSB head Ellen G. Engleman said that Michael Gansas exercised his 5th Amendment right against self-incrimination and refused to answer questions about the Oct. 15 accident. "We hope we will be able to talk to Capt. Gansas in the future," Engleman said in a statement.
BUSINESS
March 23, 2002 | DAVID STREITFELD, TIMES STAFF WRITER
Nancy Temple, a lawyer for accounting firm Andersen being quizzed about her role in the shredding of Enron Corp. documents, cited her 5th Amendment right to keep silent 138 times Friday. Temple was deposed by lawyers who had filed a class-action suit against Andersen, which approved Enron's financial statements. In an unusual move, a federal judge in Houston permitted Temple and eight other Andersen employees to be questioned much earlier than such a case would normally allow.
NEWS
February 26, 2002
People who play the market are now at each other's throats. The Bulls & Tigers of Forest Hills, a ladies investment club of 10, meets every month to play the stock market. This month the meeting was held at Jane Peters' house. The club had made $20,000 in the year 2000, and while things went down in 2001, they could still barely hold their heads above water. When the going was good, they called themselves the Sunshine Ladies because they couldn't lose as far as their investments were concerned.
BUSINESS
Read the rest here:
Lois Lerner, former director of the Tax Exempt and Government Entities Division at the Internal Revenue Service, exercises her Fifth Amendment Right against self incrimination during a hearing of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on Capitol Hill on March 5. BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP/Getty Images
WASHINGTON - The Republican-led House voted Wednesday to hold former Internal Revenue Service official Lois Lerner in contempt of Congress for refusing to answer questions related to the agency's undue scrutiny of certain tax-exempt groups.
The vote to hold Lerner in contempt of Congress was 231-187, with all Republicans voting in favor and all but a few Democrats voting against.
It's now up to a local U.S. attorney to consider criminal charges against Lerner. The Justice Department, however, has ignored past contempt charges against executive branch officials, including contempt charges against Attorney General Eric Holder.
While the vote may have no practical impact, it does up the ante in the political bout between Democrats and Republicans over the IRS scandal.
Republicans maintain they are determined to get to the bottom of the scandal and find out why IRS officials, starting in 2010, unfairly targeted groups for their political activity.
"All we're doing as Article One is saying an employee of Article Two, the executive branch, didn't properly assert her rights," House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., explained to his congressional colleagues Tuesday night in a meeting of the House Rules Committee. "We want Article Three, the federal court, to decide whether or not... we should be entitled to answers to some of our questions. ... Nothing could be less partisan than, in fact, to let the federal court decide."
In addition to holding Lerner in contempt, the House also voted 250-168 to approve a resolution calling on Holder to appoint a special counsel to investigate the IRS targeting.
Democrats have dismissed the GOP's aggressive pursuit of this issue as a partisan witch-hunt. They've noted that multiple investigations into the IRS have already been launched, including an ongoing Justice Department investigation. Democrats have also stressed that the IRS inappropriately targeted both conservative and liberal groups, while pointing to evidence showing the misconduct wasn't politically motivated.
On top of all that, Democrats assert there is no basis for the contempt charge.
Follow this link:
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
(CNN) -- Acting on a conservative battle cry and potentially triggering a court battle with the Obama administration, the Republican-led House voted Wednesday to hold former IRS official Lois Lerner in contempt of Congress for refusing to answer questions about her agency's targeting of conservative and other groups.
The 231-187 vote fell almost entirely along party lines, a decision that cut across three sharp divides: balance of power issues between the branches of government, political questions over the IRS scandal, and a Constitutional debate over Lerner's individual Fifth Amendment rights.
Lerner is in the middle of that trio. Until she retired last year, she ran the IRS division in charge of tax exempt status. An inspector general's report concluded her staff had inappropriately targeted Tea Party and other groups for extra scrutiny.
The term "progressive" was also flagged but the inspector general report indicated that conservative terms drew more attention from the IRS.
The Fifth Amendment question
For nearly a year, Lerner has refused House requests to testify on the matter, citing her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.
Republicans insist that doesn't apply here, that she waived the right by first asserting her innocence when she appeared before the House Oversight Committee last May.
"Mrs. Lerner made 17 separate factual assertions before invoking her right to remain silent," proclaimed Rep. Richard Nugent, Republican of Florida, as he opened up Wednesday's debate. "You can't make selective assertions and still invoke your Fifth Amendment right."
Lerner's attorney, William Taylor, has dismissed that argument repeatedly and sent a statement rejecting it again Wednesday.
Continued here:
The 231-187 contempt vote came three days shy of the date when Lerner apologized at a legal conference last year for actions the IRS took against organizations with tea party and patriot in their names. Her comments marked the first time the agency officially acknowledged using inappropriate screening techniques toward conservative groups.
Days after the event, an inspector general released a report saying the IRS inappropriately targeted tax-exemption applicants for extra scrutiny based on their names and policy positions.
The House voted 250-168 in favor of the measure calling for a special prosecutor to investigate the matter. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.), who pushed for the move last week, has said the IRSs actions are too serious a matter to leave to the discretion of partisan political appointees.
The contempt resolution asks the Justice Department to seek criminal prosecution against Lerner.
Now the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia can consider referring the matter to a grand jury for further review. It is unclear how the Justice Department will proceed.
Lerners attorney, William Taylor, has repeatedly denied that his client did anything wrong. Todays vote has nothing to do with the facts or the law, he said in a statement. Its only purpose is to keep the baseless IRS conspiracy alive through the midterm elections.
Democrats on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which is investigating the matter, have argued that Congress cannot legally hold Lerner, who retired from the IRS in September, in contempt because the panel never explicitly overruled her Fifth Amendment assertion or clearly directed her to testify with the threat of contempt.
Republicans counter that the committee effectively overruled Lerners refusal to testify when it voted in favor of a resolution saying she waived her Fifth Amendment right by declaring innocence during the first hearing. They say the committee also warned her that she could face contempt charges for refusing to answer questions at a follow-up hearing in March.
Before Wednesdays vote, the House oversight committees top Democrat, Rep. Elijah Cummings (Md.), urged GOP lawmakers to allow a hearing to discuss the contempt matter with independent legal experts. He said in a statement Wednesday that Republicans took a step backwards in their duty to uphold the U.S. Constitution by voting to strip an American citizen of her Fifth Amendment rights.
The panels chairman, Rep. Darrel Issa (R-Calif.), described Wednesdays contempt vote as a step toward a level of accountability that the Obama administration has been unwilling to take.
Read the original:
House votes to hold ex-IRS official Lois Lerner in contempt of Congress
Acting on a conservative battle cry and potentially triggering a court battle with the Obama administration, the Republican-led House voted Wednesday to hold former IRS official Lois Lerner in contempt of Congress for refusing to answer questions about her agency's targeting of conservative and other groups.
The 231-187 vote fell almost entirely along party lines, a decision that cut across three sharp divides: balance of power issues between the branches of government, political questions over the IRS scandal, and a Constitutional debate over Lerner's individual Fifth Amendment rights.
Lerner is in the middle of that trio. Until she retired last year, she ran the IRS division in charge of tax exempt status. An inspector general's report concluded her staff had inappropriately targeted Tea Party and other groups for extra scrutiny.
The term "progressive" was also flagged but the inspector general report indicated that conservative terms drew more attention from the IRS.
The Fifth Amendment question
For nearly a year, Lerner has refused House requests to testify on the matter, citing her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.
Republicans insist that doesn't apply here, that she waived the right by first asserting her innocence when she appeared before the House Oversight Committee last May.
"Mrs. Lerner made 17 separate factual assertions before invoking her right to remain silent," proclaimed Rep. Richard Nugent, Republican of Florida, as he opened up Wednesday's debate. "You can't make selective assertions and still invoke your Fifth Amendment right."
Lerner's attorney, William Taylor, has dismissed that argument repeatedly and sent a statement rejecting it again Wednesday.
"Today's vote has nothing to do with the facts or the law," Taylor wrote. "Its only purpose is to keep the baseless IRS "conspiracy" alive through the midterm elections. Ms. Lerner has not committed contempt of Congress. She did not waive her Fifth Amendment rights by proclaiming her innocence."
More here:
David Samson, former chairman of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, refused to hand over more documents to state lawmakers probing the George Washington Bridge lane closings, citing his constitutional right against self-incrimination.
Lawyers for Samson, an ally of Governor Chris Christie, questioned the fairness and legitimacy of the inquiry. They asserted his Fifth Amendment privilege amid investigations by U.S. Attorney for New Jersey Paul Fishman and others. Lawmakers want to know which of Christies allies shut access lanes last September to the bridge, which the Port Authority runs.
While Samson has done nothing wrong and has violated no laws, the Fifth Amendment protects innocent men who otherwise might be ensnared by ambiguous circumstances, his lawyers wrote yesterday to the counsel for a legislative committee that subpoenaed documents from him.
The legislative committee is engaged in a political exercise, not an objective fact-finding mission, Samson attorney Michael Chertoff said in a statement. Samson cannot and will not participate in a process that fundamentally jeopardizes his constitutional rights and which stands to wrongly besmirch his reputation for honesty and public service.
Two other figures in the center of the scandal -- Bridget Anne Kelly, a former deputy chief of staff to Christie, and David Wildstein, once a high-ranking official at the Port Authority -- also invoked their right against self incrimination in response to subpoenas for documents. A state judge refused to enforce their subpoenas, saying they were overbroad and amounted to a fishing expedition.
Samson, who initially turned over some documents, will not hand over any more because the committee has repeatedly disregarded its own procedures, wrote Chertoff and his co-counsel Angelo Genova. Fishmans office also has subpoenaed material from the committee, effectively treating the committee as a conduit for its own investigation, they said.
Samson resigned on March 28, a day after a law firms report commissioned by Christie absolved the Republican governor in the lane closings. The report blamed Kelly and Wildstein for traffic tie-ups that crippled Fort Lee, New Jersey, where the Democratic mayor didnt back Christies re-election last fall.
The committee has subpoenaed documents from 28 people and organizations, and will take testimony this month from several witnesses. The Democratic co-chairmen, Senator Loretta Weinberg and Assemblyman John Wisniewski, said in a statement that they were disappointed by Samsons decision.
The best way to get to the root of this abuse of government power is full cooperation by everyone, they said. We will obviously continue forward with this bipartisan inquiry until the people of New Jersey get the answers they deserve.
-With assistance by Terrence Dopp in Trenton, New Jersey.
See the original post:
SIOUX CITY | As he sat in a hospital emergency room being treated for a gunshot wound, Juan Nino-Estrada mumbled what police officers thought sounded like the words "Fifth Amendment."
Neither officer was sure what exactly Nino-Estrada, at the time a suspect in a double homicide, said, they testified Friday.
"He made a comment under his breath, but I can't recall what he said. Something similar to 'Fifth Amendment' or something like that," Officer Greg Rose said.
Lawyers for Nino-Estrada have asked that statements he made that night not be admissible at trial, claiming police continued to question him after he had invoked his rights to remain silent and not incriminate himself.
Nino-Estrada, 27, of Sioux City, is charged in Woodbury County District Court with two counts of first-degree murder and single counts of attempted murder and willful injury for the Nov. 7 shooting deaths of Michael Delgado, 35, of Sioux City, and Yolanda Valdez, 35, of Orange City, Iowa, at a house in the 500 block of West 27th Street. Nino-Estrada is also charged with shooting Luis Sanchez, of Sioux City. Sanchez survived.
Police have said that an altercation between Nino-Estrada and another man at the house escalated into the shooting.
Rose said police Det. Jeremy McClure advised Nino-Estrada of his rights shortly after being taken into custody at an apartment building in the 1400 block of Grandview Boulevard and prior to being taken to Mercy Medical Center.
Once at the hospital, Rose left to retrieve his patrol car. When he returned, Rose said, he entered a Mercy Medical Center emergency treatment room and heard Officer Josiah Fenceroy asking Nino-Estrada a series of background questions when he heard Nino-Estrada say what sounded like the words Fifth Amendment.
Fenceroy testified that he, too, heard Nino-Estrada say something like Fifth Amendment.
"You did not ask for clarification when he mumbled 'Fifth Amendment?'" public defender Sharese Manker asked Fenceroy.
Original post:
Police not sure if Sioux City murder suspect invoked 5th Amendment rights
HST 330 fifth amendment presentation
By: Cullen Smith
Link:
Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly said the Alabama Education Association is currently paying Edward Lane's lawyers.
WASHINGTON - Government employees who testify about public corruption are protected by the First Amendment, several Supreme Court justices suggested Monday.
During oral arguments in a freedom-of-speech case out of Alabama, several justices challenged the notion that public employees who testify truthfully about an issue of significant public concern aren't shielded from retaliation by the First Amendment.
"What kind of message are we giving when we're telling employees, you're subpoenaed in a trial, go and tell a falsehood because otherwise you can be fired?" Justice Sonia Sotomayor asked attorneys in the case.
The Fifth Amendment protects state employees against self-incrimination on the witness stand, but "it doesn't protect the department he works for from being incriminated," Chief Justice John Roberts said.
The case involves an employee at Central Alabama Community College whose testimony helped convict former Alabama state representative Sue Schmitz of corruption-related charges. The employee, Edward Lane of Ashville, was fired after he testified at Schmitz's first trial in 2008.
Before Lane gets a chance to prove in court his firing was retaliatory, the Supreme Court must decide if his testimony is protected speech under the First Amendment.
Lane, who attended Monday's arguments, was surprised that's even in doubt.
"I thought for sure that being able to go testify truthfully in court that I should be protected," he said in an interview on the Supreme Court steps after Monday's arguments. "And to find out (the other side) actually thinks that is not the case - that just blows me over."
Steve Franks, former president of the two-year college, says Lane's testimony wasn't protected by the First Amendment. His attorney, Mark Waggoner of Birmingham, argued Monday that Lane's testimony was based on information he gleaned only from his job and that he was testifying as a state employee, not a regular citizen.
Read this article:
The Fifth Amendment (Amendment V) to the United States Constitution is part of the Bill of Rights and protects against abuse of government authority.
The Amendment requires that felonies be tried only upon indictment by a grand jury; the Grand Jury Clause is one of the few provisions of the Bill of Rights not held to have been incorporated to the states, most of which have replaced grand juries. The Amendment also provides several trial protections, including the right against self-incrimination (held to also apply to custodial interrogations and before most government bodies) as well as the right to be tried only once ("double jeopardy") in federal court for the same offense. The Amendment also has a Due Process Clause (similar to the one in the 14th Amendment) as well as an implied equal protection requirement (Bolling v. Sharpe). Finally, the Amendment requires that the power of eminent domain be coupled with "just compensation" for those whose property is taken.
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.[1]
Whether a crime is "infamous" is determined by the nature of the punishment that may be imposed, not the punishment that is actually imposed;[2] however, crimes punishable by death must be tried upon indictments. In United States v. Moreland, 258 U.S. 433 (1922), the Supreme Court held that incarceration in a prison or penitentiary, as opposed to a correction or reformation house, attaches infamy to a crime. In Mackin v. United States, 117 U.S. 348 (1886), the Supreme Court judged that "'Infamous crimes' are thus, in the most explicit words, defined to be those 'punishable by imprisonment in the penitentiary.'", while it later in Green v. United States 356 U.S. 165 (1957), stated that "imprisonment in a penitentiary can be imposed only if a crime is subject to imprisonment exceeding one year". Therefore an infamous crime is one that is punished by imprisonment for over one year. Susan Brown, a former defense attorney and Professor of Law at the University of Dayton School of Law, concluded: "Since this is essentially the definition of a felony, infamous crimes translate as felonies."[3]
Grand juries, which return indictments in many criminal cases, are composed of a jury of peers and operate in closed deliberation proceedings; they are given specific instructions regarding the law by the judge. Many constitutional restrictions that apply in court or in other situations do not apply during grand jury proceedings. For example, the exclusionary rule does not apply to certain evidence presented to a grand jury; the exclusionary rule states that evidence obtained in violation of the Fourth, Fifth or Sixth amendments cannot be introduced in court.[4] Also, an individual does not have the right to have an attorney present in the grand jury room during hearings. An individual would have such a right during questioning by the police while in custody, but an individual testifying before a grand jury is free to leave the grand jury room to consult with his or her attorney outside the room before returning to answer a question.
Currently, federal law permits the trial of misdemeanors without indictments.[5] Additionally, in trials of non-capital felonies, the prosecution may proceed without indictments if the defendants waive their Fifth Amendment right.
Grand jury indictments may be amended by the prosecution only in limited circumstances. In Ex Parte Bain, 121 U.S. 1 (1887), the Supreme Court held that the indictment could not be changed at all by the prosecution. United States v. Miller, 471 U.S. 130 (1985) partly reversed Ex parte Bain; now, an indictment's scope may be narrowed by the prosecution. Thus, lesser included charges may be dropped, but new charges may not be added.
The Grand Jury Clause of the Fifth Amendment does not protect those serving in the armed forces, whether during wartime or peacetime. Members of the state militia called up to serve with federal forces are not protected under the clause either. In O'Callahan v. Parker, 395 U.S. 258 (1969), the Supreme Court held that only charges relating to service may be brought against members of the militia without indictments. That decision was overturned in 1987, when the Court held that members of the militia in actual service may be tried for any offense without indictments.[6]
The grand jury indictment clause of the Fifth Amendment has not been incorporated under the Fourteenth Amendment.[7] This means that the grand jury requirement applies only to felony charges in the federal court system. While many states do employ grand juries, no defendant has a Fifth Amendment right to a grand jury for criminal charges in state court. States are free to abolish grand juries, and many (though not all) have replaced them with preliminary hearing.
The Double Jeopardy Clause encompasses four distinct prohibitions: subsequent prosecution after acquittal, subsequent prosecution after conviction, subsequent prosecution after certain mistrials, and multiple punishment in the same indictment.[9] Jeopardy "attaches" when the jury is empaneled in a jury trial, when the first witness is sworn in during a bench trial, or when a plea is accepted unconditionally.[10]
Excerpt from:
Text of Amendment: No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation. Indictment by a Grand Jury: Nobody can go to trial for a serious crime, except in a military setting, without first being indicted by a grand jury. Double Jeopardy:
The Fifth Amendment also mandates that defendants, once acquitted on a charge, may not be tried again for the same offense at the same jurisdictional level. Defendants may be tried again if the previous trial ended in a mistrial or hung jury, if there is evidence of fraud in the previous trial, or if the charges are not precisely the same--for example, the police officers who beat Rodney King, after being acquitted on state charges, were convicted on federal charges for the same offense.
The best known clause in the Fifth Amendment ("No person ... shall be compelled in a criminal case to be a witness against himself") protects suspects from forced self-incrimination. When a suspect invokes his or her Fifth Amendment right to remain silent, this is referred to in the vernacular as "pleading the Fifth." It should not by any means be taken as a sign of guilt, but it is generally portrayed as such in courtroom television dramas.
View post:
We are considering offers for the sale of this website. Use the contact form in the left column to contact us for more information.
The 5th Amendment is better known to most Americans than the other amendments in the Bill of Rights because of the familiar phrase "I plead the fifth," often used as a defense in criminal trials. The 5th Amendment also guarantees Americans several other basic rights, including the right to trial by Grand Jury for certain crimes, the right not to be tried or punished more than once for the same crime, the right to be tried only with due process of law and the right to be paid fair compensation for any property taken by the government for public use. The Fifth Amendment reads like this:
"No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation."
The 5th Amendment is made up of 5 specific parts containing 6 different clauses, including:
On the page below, you can read a little about each clause. Then, if you would like to know more about that particular clause of the 5th Amendment, just click on the link for more information.
The 5th Amendment opens with the Grand Jury Clause. It reads like this:
"No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury."
The Grand Jury Clause guarantees that Americans cannot be charged with serious federal crimes except with an indictment by a grand jury. This is generally considered to be a protection from corrupt government officials who might try to prosecute people unfairly, because a group of fellow citizens is required to look over the evidence first.
Click to enlarge
Grand Jury at the Arcadia Hotel fire in Boston, 1913
Visit link: