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<p>Flores Laboy and Bigley said that police photographed the teenager's genitals last month but wanted the additional photos for better comparison to their evidence. In order to make his penis erect, they planned to take him to a hospital and give him an injection, Bigley said.</p>

In 1981, a lawyer tried to subpoena Ron Paul to testify in the trial of Don Black, a Grand Wizard for the Ku Klux Klan who would later go on to found the white supremacist, neo-Nazi website, Stormfront. Black was charged along with two other Klansmen with planning to violently overthrow the small Caribbean country of Dominica in what they called “Operation Red Dog.” While a judge refused to subpoena Paul, Don Black would come back to haunt him many years later. In 1981 a group of American and Canadian white supremacists lead by Klansman and mercenary, Michael (Mike) Perdue...

Lerner’s lawyer below says she did NOT waive her 5th Amendment rights. Professor Alan Dershowitz of Harvard Law says she did waive them. Bottom line — on close questions — you steer your client to a SAFE path. That is the role of a lawyer – to protect your client. As a former criminal defense attorney, I know the SAFE path would have been to say ZERO before the Committee (except to assert the 5th) and then go outside and say whatever you want to the cameras. The same would have been achieved with the safe route (and more!) except...

Hissy fit! Moments ago, embattled ex-Internal Revenue Service official Lois Lerner appeared before Darrell Issa's House Oversight Committee. She was supposedly there to answer questions about the IRS targeting of Tea Party groups.  You may remember that President Obama has dismissed this entire scandal because he claims there wasn't "even a smidgen of corruption" involved. That's weird, because Lois Lerner promptly invoked her rights under the 5th Amendment and refused to answer any questions. For the record, the 5th Amendment is the one that deals with not offering testimony that might incriminate yourself.  You'd think that would be hard to do if...

Full title: Pleading the Fifth: Official Won't Answer Questions About Making Parody Videos While Injured Vets Wait for Benefits Veterans coming back from wars in Afghanistan and Iraq with severe injuries and post-traumatic stress disorder have been left behind by their government as they desperately wait for a response about disability benefits from the Department of Veteran's affairs. Many veterans returning from war have been waiting for over a year. Currently, the VA system has a backlog of approximately 500,000 cases and they're being cleared extremely slowly, causing further long term pain to veterans and their families. Under relentless pressure...

The vote was 13-5 for a compromise defining a "covered journalist" as an employee, independent contractor or agent of an entity that disseminates news or information. The individual would have been employed for one year within the last 20 or three months within the last five years. It would apply to student journalists or someone with a considerable amount of freelance work in the last five years. A federal judge also would have the discretion to declare an individual a "covered journalist," who would be granted the privileges of the law.

The response was predictable, even to those who had maintained hope for a different outcome. After the jury found George Zimmerman not guilty of murdering Trayvon Martin, many cities erupted into protests of what was perceived as a fundamentally unfair and racially-biased verdict that was the result of a broken justice system. Among those protesting that Zimmerman should be punished, some admitted that the flaw was actually found within the Florida law which departs significantly from the common law by allowing individuals who initiate confrontations to use deadly force to defend themselves without a duty to escape. Florida's Stand Your...

Petition for the DOJ to allow the American Justice system and due process to stand. No double jeopardy for George Zimmerman. "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...

On Tuesday, William W. Taylor III, attorney for Lois Lerner, the IRS official at the center of the Tea Party targeting scandal who invoked her Fifth amendment rights before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on May 22, set forward his client's hard line conditions to return and testify openly before the committee."They can obtain her testimony tomorrow by doing it the easy way … immunity. That’s the way to resolve all of this," he told Politico.Congressman Jim Jordan (R-OH), a member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee was unimpressed. "We hope she comes in and gives us the truth...

Fireworks won’t be the only thing flying high over the Capitol during the Fourth of July celebration. An American flag made of hemp, a non-psychoactive variant of marijuana, will be flown over the Capitol on July 4 for one day. Industrial hemp–which is considered by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to be a Schedule I substance along with ecstasy and heroin–is a type of cannabis plant that cannot legally be grown in the U.S. but is legally imported and used in hundreds of products ranging from rope to clothing.

In a 5-4 decision the Supreme Court ruled today that a potential defendant’s silence can be used against him if he is being interviewed by police but is not arrested (and read his Miranda rights) and has not verbally invoked the protection of the Fifth Amendment.Tim Lynch at the Cato Institute explains that the Salinas v. Texas case was intended to be about whether prosecutors during a trial could cast aspersions on a defendant’s silence during questioning that took place prior to arrest — prior to the defendent being told he had the right to remain silent. Instead, the Supreme...

<p>WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An IRS official effectively waived her right not to testify about the tax agency's targeting of conservative groups, a Republican-led congressional committee concluded on Friday in a vote that cleared the way for Congress to hold her in contempt.</p>

Republicans on a House committee rejected strenuous Democratic objections in voting Friday that Internal Revenue Service official Lois Lerner waived her constitutional right against self-incrimination at a prior hearing. The resolution was the first step in an effort by Rep. Darrell Issa of California, the GOP chairman of the House Oversight Committee, to force Lerner to return to answer questions about targeting of conservative groups by the unit she headed. It passed on a 22-17 vote, with every Republican in favor and every Democrat opposed, following an unusually vitriolic hearing. ... Under subpoena to testify before Issa's panel on May...

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee voted 22-17 on Friday that embattled IRS official Lois Lerner waived her Fifth Amendment rights during a hearing last month on the agency's tea party targeting scandal. The party-line vote paves the way for the committee to bring Lerner back to Congress and force her to answer questions from lawmakers...

House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell E. Issa said Friday he believes the woman at the center of the IRS scandal waived her Fifth Amendment rights when she came before the committee last month. “I have considered the matter deliberately,” including the opinion of Lois Lerner’s lawyers, Mr. Issa said, Ms. Lerner, director of tax-exempt organizations for the IRS, began the witnesses’ testimony by denying that she acted improperly and then invoked her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. “I have not done anything wrong. I have not broken any laws,” she said. “I have not violated any IRS...

According to Town Hall: “An Illinois Social Studies teacher faces disciplinary action for reminding his students of their Fifth Amendment rights when filling out a school survey on behavior…John Dryden was collecting the surveys before class when he noticed the students’ names were printed on them. He looked to see what was being asked and noticed questions about alcohol and drug use…Dryden told his students that they had a Constitutional right to not incriminate themselves by answering questions on the survey.” As a result of Mr. Dryden informing his students about their basic Fifth Amendment rights, he is now facing...

I do not understand why she was not made to answer every question. And why has Congress not subpoenaed her computer (home and office)?

American citizens can be ordered to decrypt their PGP-scrambled hard drives for police to peruse for incriminating files, a federal judge in Colorado ruled today in what could become a precedent-setting case. Judge Robert Blackburn ordered a Peyton, Colo., woman to decrypt the hard drive of a Toshiba laptop computer no later than February 21--or face the consequences including contempt of court. Blackburn, a George W. Bush appointee, ruled that the Fifth Amendment posed no barrier to his decryption order. The Fifth Amendment says that nobody may be "compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself," which...

The U.S. Senate has approved of a $109 billion bill that provides two years of funding for transportation and transit projects around the country. The bill may or may not be taken up by the U.S. House Representatives depending on if they choose to write a separate House bill, but hopefully what will be left out of any final version is an amendment by Montana U.S. Sen. Max Baucus. His amendment funds the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) to the tune of $1.4 billion for fiscal years 2013 and 2014 — quite a jump from the $323 million it...

Today in Yemen, U.S. air strikes killed American citizen Anwar Al-Aulaqi. Al-Aulaqi has never been charged with a crime. Last year, the ACLU and Center for Constitutional Rights represented Al-Aulaqi's father in a lawsuit challenging the government's asserted authority to carry out "targeted killings" of U.S. citizens located far from any armed conflict zone. We argued that such killings violate the Constitution and international law, but the case was dismissed in federal court last December. In response to today's killing of Al-Aulaqi, ACLU Deputy Legal Director Jameel Jaffer said: The targeted killing program violates both U.S. and international law. As...