Hacker News Reader

He got jail because he refused to give up his friend and thus became an accessory.

It is basic human right to refuse testify against yourself or family member.

It's a Constitutional right to refuse to give testimony that would incriminate yourself. In certain contexts it's a statutory or common law privilege to refuse to give testimony that would incriminate a spouse. There is no privilege recognized for family members or friends, nor has there ever been in the Anglo-American tradition, nor am I aware of any other country in which there is a privilege against testifying against family or friends.

In refusing to tell the police where he got the counterfeit bills, the person in the story above helped cover up his friend's crime. Helping other people commit crimes is bad and deserves punishment--whether they are your friends or not.

You have a strange sense of justice. He didn't help anyone commit any crimes. He simply opted out of participating. It's not his problem, and he did nothing wrong. To punish him defies reason.

There is a threshold at which you could make the argument that there is a moral obligation to turn in one's friend if they are committing atrocities, but no one can argue that this is an example.

It's not my particular sense of justice, it's how our justice system is structured and how it always has been. There is a strong presumption that individuals will cooperate with police to help investigate crimes. That's why the 5th amendment protection against self-incrimination even exists--it's an exception to our general practice that people can be compelled to testify about crimes. As a general rule, our society does not consider it acceptable to "opt out" of participating in a criminal investigation, especially in a case like this one where the person being asked to help is a suspect by virtue of the circumstances.

Aside from your argumentum ad antiquitatem, I think it is rather presumptuous to speak for "society" this way. For starters, I think both left- and right-libertarians, as well as most journalists, would disagree with you. I would also guess that society in general would be outraged if a journalist was jailed for that particular offense, so what you claim is clearly not universally true.

I also disagree that this person is a reasonable suspect, any more than the pizza restaurant, who probably either gave it to a customer as change, used it to pay a vendor, or deposited it.

Although the orwellian term "justice system" is undoubtedly convenient for such an argument, I'm going to suggest thhat your statement be read with a substitution of "legal framework" in its place. It's important to remember that law and justice are not synonymous. In fact, a founding father of our "society" himself (Thomas Jefferson) made this distinction: "If a law is unjust, a man is not only right to disobey it, he is obligated to do so."

So we must ask, was justice served? An honest man unwittingly committed a minor crime of minimal or no public harm (at worst, someone was out $20 or so) and returned to correct his error, making all parties whole. In return, his life is ruined and he is sent to prison, which cost him and the taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars, at least. The answer is unequivocally no, justice was not served.

Edit: It also seems like you're conflating refusing to testify with being an accessory. Your claim was the latter, which is much more serious than contempt of court. Passive concealment by non-participation after the fact is in no way "assisting", by definition, because the crime already happened. If that was the claim, it's absolutely an abuse of the spirit of the law.

When you commit a crime it's not just actually doing the thing that's the hard part. It's also getting away with it. If you don't accomplish the getting away with it bit, well, then you've pretty much failed as a criminal right?

The main character in this story assisted in the getting away with it part of the crime. That's an accessory. And it's absolutely a crime to be an accessory, and I'm confused as to why anyone would have a problem with that.

We can't have a civilized society if people don't help the authorities catch the bad guys.

Law in Czech Republic says you can refuse to testify against yourself or family member. Sorry for confusion, I though laws are similar in US.

What do you do in the situation where you really don't know where the bills came from?

They basically got him to make a plea deal. They were going to hit him with a few felonies.

You made it sound like he knew where the bills came from and that he was just unwilling to sell out his friend.

Look at it from the police's perspective. Someone passes counterfeit currency, but then claims he didn't know, and is unwilling to help find who the money came from. What do you do? If the answer is: nothing, then anyone caught passing counterfeit currency, or crimes of a similar nature, could just claim that they got the money from someone else and declined to disclose who. If he had cooperated with the police regarding the source of the money, it's quite unlikely that he would have gotten jailed.

Oh, I know. I'm a bit cloudy on whether or not he knew where they came from immediately. He did eventually figure it out. I'm just wondering about cases where you really honestly do not know.

I have a (maybe unnatural?) fear of something like that happening and not being able to prove that I truly have no idea and then being forced into some kind of a plea deal.

I can definitely see the police's perspective too.

Except in front of a grand jury, which isn't a trial, so you don't have your fifth amendment rights.

Many activists have been held in contempt for not saying anything, and have served prison sentences for it.

Do you have a source for that? My understanding is that otherwise inadmissible evidence can be used in a grand jury hearing, but you are still free to "plead the Fifth" in front of a grand jury without being held in contempt. Meaning, if you were previously compelled to self-incriminate, that might not be admissible in your trial, but it would be admissible in a grand jury hearing (same for the Fourth and Sixth).

Now, the Fifth only guarantees protection against self incrimination, so I assume you could still be held in contempt for refusing to incriminate others.

I may have been a bit strong with my wording, as I am not a lawyer. But:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jordan_Halliday

> He was indicted by a federal grand jury in 2009 on charges related to resisting a federal grand jury investigating local illegal animal rights activities, mainly concerning fur farm raids in Utah. He was jailed for nearly four months under a contempt of court order to compel him to testify.

Most recently: http://www.salon.com/2012/10/19/grand_jury_resistor_leah_rel...

For more: http://grandjuryresistance.org/

After reading some of your sources, it doesn't appear to me that anyone was held in contempt for exercising their Fifth Amendment rights. Rather, they seem to have refused to cooperate with the Grand Jury at all [1]. You can be compelled to cooperate with the government to incriminate others so long as you aren't compelled to incriminate yourself.

[1]: Perhaps for good reasons -- it seems people are fighting against what appears to be an over-reach of Grand Juries. But that would just be an example of civil disobedience, which often carries the risk of jail time, not an example of the Fifth Amendment not applying in a Grand Jury hearing.

Right, hence my 'I'm not a lawyer.' I guess I tend to associate 'not incriminate yourself' with 'not talking,' which is not true 100% of the time. Thanks for pointing out this difference.

The end result is the same, though, especially given the post I was responding to.

You don't have the right to "not talk." You're expected as a citizen to cooperate with the justice system. The 5th amendment protection from testifying against yourself is an exception to this general expectation.

Sadly, the real lesson here is that he should have just forgotten about it, disposed of the remaining counterfeit money, and hoped nothing ever came of the matter. Doing the "right thing" in these situations just opens the door to someone with more power or authority misinterpreting the situation or acting maliciously.

I learned this during my first week of high school, fortunately in a manner not involving law enforcement or anything more severe than school rules involving attendance. :)

Story I heard from a social worker. Guy's mom calls him up and asks for her prescription medication. Takes a few in a ziploc, drives it over and is stopped by a cop on the way. Gets out his registration, cop sees the baggie and arrests him. Crime #1 was having prescription meds not prescribed to him, but simply by putting it in a ziploc it's automatically raised to intent to sell/distribute. Seems like something a lot of people would have done innocuously.