Free Republic

The three jurors who voted against the death penalty for Parkland killer Nikolas Cruz did so based on “mitigating circumstances” from Cruz’s life. They made the wrong call, but their rationale is superior to the reason many will agree with the sentence: a blanket opposition to the death penalty. Public support for capital punishment has slid over the last 30 years, remaining a majority opinion but barely so. Those who oppose death as a punishment often have kind, even noble intentions. Yet their well-meaning beliefs do not translate into justice or the common good. The death penalty is consistent with...

(Text for the vide from this link: https://thecivilrightslawyer.com/2022/08/05/police-harass-innocent-citizens-on-their-porch-lawsuit-filed-today/ ) Police Harass Innocent Citizens on Their Porch – Lawsuit Filed Today Posted on August 5, 2022 What you’re about to see here is outrageous body cam footage that has never before been seen by anyone, other than law enforcement. It shows what happened to my clients, Jason Tartt, the property owner and landlord, as well as Donnie and Ventriss Hairston, his innocent and mistreated tenants, on August 7, 2020, when they were subjected to civil rights violations by two deputies with the McDowell County Sheriff’s Office, Dalton Martin and Jordan Horn....

UPDATE: (Aug. 12, 2022, 3:13 p.m. ET): NBC News on Friday obtained a copy of the warrant used in the FBI's search of former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago home in Florida, as well as the related property receipt. The FBI recovered 11 sets of classified documents in the search, according to the documents. This week, in addition to having his private residence searched by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, former President Donald Trump was deposed in an investigation by the New York Attorney General’s office. There he apparently didn’t say much other than that he was asserting his Fifth Amendment...

A former federal prosecutor triggered bipartisan backlash on Wednesday for suggesting that invoking Fifth Amendment rights implies guilt. What is the background? On Wednesday, former President Donald Trump invoked his constitutional rights against self-incrimination, declining to answer questions at a deposition for New York Attorney General Letitia James (D). Trump announced he invoked his Fifth Amendment rights after arriving to the deposition. The statement explained: I once asked, "If you’re innocent, why are you taking the Fifth Amendment?" Now I know the answer to that question. When your family, your company, and all the people in your orbit have become...

Former President Trump said Wednesday that he refused to answer any questions from New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) in the civil investigation over his business. Why it matters: The deposition comes as Trump has faced a new level of legal scrutiny and just days after the FBI executed a search warrant at the former president's Mar-a-Lago residence in an unrelated investigation. What he's saying: "Under the advice of my counsel, ... I declined to answer the questions under the rights and privileges afforded to every citizen under the United States Constitution," Trump said in a post on his...

Trump just posted on Truth that he took the 5th

The federal government prosecuted Merle Denezpi twice for the same crime. It also punished him twice: the first time with 140 days in a federal detention center, the second time with a prison sentence more than 70 times as long.Although that may seem like an obvious violation of the Fifth Amendment's ban on double jeopardy, the Supreme Court last week ruled that it wasn't. As the six justices in the majority saw it, that puzzling conclusion was the logical result of the Court's counterintuitive precedents on this subject. The Fifth Amendment says no person shall "be subject for the same...

Special Counsel John Durham continues to drop bombshells in filings in the prosecution of former Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann. Just last week, Durham defeated an effort by Sussmann to dismiss the charges. He is now moving to give immunity to a key witness while revealing that the claims made by the Clinton campaign were viewed by the CIA as “not technically plausible” and “user created.” He also revealed that at least five of the former Clinton campaign contractors/researchers have invoked the Fifth Amendment and refused to cooperate in fear that they might incriminate themselves in criminal conduct. Finally, Durham...

'Russia collusion' investigation continues to rock Washington with 'bombshells'. Special Counsel John Durham's investigation into the origins of the "Russia collusion" conspiracy theory that Democrats projected on the 2016 Trump campaign – for years – continues to be rocked by bombshells. Among the latest, according to constitutional expert and popular commentator Jonathan Turley, is that so far "at least five of the former Clinton campaign contractors/researchers have invoked the Fifth Amendment," refusing to cooperate "in fear that they might incriminate themselves."

Five associates of Hillary Clinton and her campaign are invoking their Fifth Amendment rights and refusing to cooperate with Special Counsel John H. Durham, according a filing in federal court revealed later Friday in Washington, DC. The revelation emerged in a motion filed by Durham to oppose the efforts of defendant Michael Sussmann and the Clinton campaign to withhold some documents from evidence by asserting attorney-client privilege. Sussmann is charged with lying to the FBI in 2016 when he informed the FBI about a fraudulent link between then-candidate Donald Trump and the Russian government via Alfa Bank. Sussmann allegedly presented...

Roger Stone called Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), the chairman of the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol breach, a "buffoon" for equating a Fifth Amendment plea to a confirmation of guilt.Thompson told MSNBC's Rachel Maddow several weeks ago that if "you want to assert the Fifth Amendment in terms of self-prosecution, it says that you have something to hide."When a person asks to plead the Fifth, refusing to answer questions to avoid self-incrimination, that "in some instances, that says you are part and parcel guilty to what occurred," Thompson also claimed."That shows you how ignorant this buffoon is,"...

It’s rare when lawyers — as opposed to their clients — take the Fifth Amendment. But Jeffrey Clark, the former Justice Department lawyer who reportedly tried to help Donald Trump overturn the 2020 presidential election, is now claiming the privilege against self-incrimination to avoid testifying before the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. He has just been joined in that posture by one of Trump’s main outside legal advisers, John Eastman. Their fear of incrimination could well be justified: There can be serious state and federal criminal consequences for trying to fraudulently interfere with an election....

Steve Bannon—the right-wing media personality turned adviser to Donald Trump turned right-wing media personality again—became the first person in nearly 40 years to be indicted on a charge of criminal contempt of Congress last month after he refused to cooperate with the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection. Now, Bannon appears to be using his criminal case to go after the committee that went after him. Bannon is attempting to force investigators to potentially expose who they’ve talked to and what they’ve said, peek into secret communications on the committee, and create a playbook for other resistant witnesses, according...

As the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse has progressed, Americans who hope for a successful conviction have begun to focus their attentions on the true villain of the piece: the 75-year-old presiding judge, Bruce Schroeder. Among the many accusations that have been leveled at Schroeder this week are that he is “biased,” that he is “prejudiced,” that he is a secret “conservative,” “right-winger,” or “Trumpist,” that he is a “a gun nut,” that he is a “a racist” or wannabe member of the Klan, that he is the “worst judge in town,” and that he is attempting to parlay this trial...

What, no leg shackles? There was tough talk from the Morning Joe crowd today regarding measures to force Republicans to testify before the tilted (and now jilted) January 6th committee. Mike Barnicle—possibly still feeling the effects of his celebration of the Red Sox's upset ALDS victory—then upped the ante. Barnicle proclaimed: "There'll be no action on this until we see someone like Steve Bannon—in handcuffs—brought to the Capitol and forced to testify under oath. Period!" Get the rest of the story and view the video here.

In the infamous case of Kelo v. City of New London, the Supreme Court allowed the city of New London, Connecticut to take Susette Kelo’s little pink house (also the name of a very good movie about the case) via eminent domain for the “public use” of furthering economic development in the town’s Fort Trumbull neighborhood. The fight in that case was over the meaning of the words “public use” in the Fifth Amendment’s Takings Clause, and whether the words provide essentially any limit on what a municipality or legislature says is “public use.” In Kelo, one of the major...

Whatever your view on President Trump's responsibility for the events of January 6th, it was still stunning to hear Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York City on Jonathan Capehart's MSNBC Sunday Show this morning, argue that the Senate should interpret Trump's declining to testify as "incriminating." Asked by Capehart whether President Trump should testify, Jeffries responded: "He should testify and defend himself. But because he has clearly refused to do so, in my view, there should be an adverse impact, an inference drawn that anything he would have had to say would have actually not been exonerating. It would have...

House Bill 2238 -- https://legiscan.com/OR/text/HB2238/2021 Relating to private property during emergency; amending ORS 35.350 and 401.188.

At a hearing of the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Shkreli repeatedly invoked the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which says no person shall be compelled in any criminal case "to be a witness against himself." Wearing a sport jacket and collared shirt rather than his usual T-shirt, he responded to questions by laughing, twirling a pencil and yawning. Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz, a Utah Republican, asked Shkreli what he would tell a single, pregnant woman with AIDS who needed Daraprim to survive, and whether he thought he had done anything wrong. Shkreli declined to answer....