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The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Michigan Supreme Court: Law enforcement now immune to perjury
 
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Dead Reckoning
Sep 13, 2011

Bip Roberts posted:

Hmm maybe they should tell the truth or take the 5th and not lie.
The problem here is that the department appears to have the power to fire them if they take the 5th. Hence the section about involuntary statements.

hobbesmaster posted:

But internal affairs isn't a court? :confused:
No, but internal affairs officers are agents of the state. They don't have the power to force someone to testify against themselves by holding their continued employment at risk.

The whole issue is that government employees have a rather unique relationship with their employer.

Dead Reckoning fucked around with this message at 02:33 on Jun 28, 2016

* # ¿ Jun 28, 2016 02:31
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Dead Reckoning
Sep 13, 2011

Helsing posted:

The relevant "constitutional protection" you were alluding to before says that no one can be: "compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself". I fail to see how actively lying is constitutionally protected. Apparently in Michigan it is statutorily protected for police officers but (and if an actual American lawyer wants to correct me here then please do) that's different than saying they have a constitutional right to lie. Nothing in the 5th amendment would seem to sanction this behavior.
If I wanted to come at it from a 5th Amendment standpoint, I'd say that, if testimony is given under coercion, then it can't be used against you. Whether the testimony was true or false is irrelevant. If the state says, for example, "You have to give us a sworn statement about where you were last Friday night, or we'll throw you in jail without charge until you do," and you choose to make a false statement because you need to be out of jail to take care of your grandma and keep your job, and the truth was that you were at your coke dealer's house buying coke, you shouldn't be prosecuted for making a false sworn statement. Yes, you had the option to take it on the chin, refuse to make a statement, and sit in jail waiting for the courts to get around to remedying your situation, but that wouldn't bring grandma back, and you're probably going to lose your job, apartment, etc. while you wait.

However, the U.S. Supreme Court may have shot down that interpretation in U.S. v Wong, when they held that the 5th doesn't condone perjury. In that case, the defendant claimed that they weren't advised of their right to remain silent, rather than being coerced.

Under the DLEOA, any information provided by a law enforcement officer, if compelled under threat of any employment sanction by the officer’s employer, cannot be used against the officer in subsequent criminal proceedings. The act does not distinguish between true and false statements. Therefore, even if false, the officer’s statements cannot be used against the officer in a subsequent prosecution. It looks like the Michigan law offers greater protection than the 5th in that circumstance.

The court noted that this was probably not the intended effect, and that, after the court found in a previous case that a grant of immunity did not apply only to truthful answers based on the plain language of the law, the legislature went back and added reference to "truthful information" to the relevant statutes. They failed to do this in the case of the DLEOA, so they should probably go back and do that.

Basically:

WhiskeyJuvenile posted:

this wasn't a constitutional decision it was a statutory decision so this is a dumb conversation when the answer is "the Michigan legislature hosed up and can fix this with the stroke of a pen"

Dead Reckoning fucked around with this message at 03:47 on Jun 28, 2016

* # ¿ Jun 28, 2016 03:17
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The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Michigan Supreme Court: Law enforcement now immune to perjury