cramer@kontron.UUCP (Clayton Cramer) (02/19/86)
I received some requests for information concerning decisions involving Fifth Amendment and First Amendment issues. Here, in full, are the newspaper stories on which my posting was based. Unfortunately, I don't have the dates these stories appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, but both are wire service stories, and should be readily locatable. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Court Bars Taking the 5th In IRS Cases Washington The Supreme Court, on an 8-to-1 vote, ruled yesterday that citizens cannot claim the Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination to keep information from the Internal Revenue Service. The IRS had argued a lower court ruling in the case would have crippled its ability to deal with tax evaders. In reversing the lower court, the justices exposed a California taxpayer to the threat of being jailed for refusing to turn over or explain the whereabouts of tax information sought by the IRS. An appeals court, splitting with other courts, would have permitted Richard Rylander Sr. of Sacramento, to escape contempt of court proceedings and jail for not turning over the documents by claiming his right against self-incrimination. Reversing that ruling, Justice William Rehnquist wrote that a taxpayer still has the burden of showing why he cannot produce tax information sought by the IRS and cannot avoid the demand by staying silent. "While the assertion of a Fifth Amendment privilege against compulsory self-incrimination may be a valid ground upon which a witness such as Rylander declines to answer questions," Rehnquist wrote, "it has never been thought to be in itself a substitute for evidence that would assist in meeting a burden of proof." Justice Thurgood Marshall dissented, saying, "I will join another opinion which creates a new exception to a basic constitutional right -- the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination." United Press ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Law Book barred from publishing judicial opinion New York Times Service WASHINGTON -- The Justice Department has obtained a highly unusual temporary order from a federal appeals court barring a law book company from publishing an opinion by a federal district judge in Colorado that was critical of the department. Glenn L. Archer Jr., the head of the department's tax division, said in an interview that the prior restraint on publication was necessary because the "slanderous" judicial opinion unfairly charged three of his prosecutors with misconduct in a grand jury investigation in Denver into suspected tax fraud. Lawyers involved in the case and other legal experts said they knew of no previous instance in which a private publisher had been barred, on pain of contempt of court, from publishing a judicial opinion. It is not unusual, on the other hand, for courts to designate certain of their own opinions as having no precedential value and thus unsuited for publication, or for law book companies to refrain voluntarily from publishing those opinions. James C. Goodale, a New York lawyer who has represented news organizations in First Amendment cases, said in an interview that the order could not "have withstood the mildest breeze from the First Amendment" and was "frightening" in its implications. "If legal opinions can be as easily enjoined as this, any kind of publication would be fair game for court injunction," Goodale said. The brief censorship order was issued Jan. 3 by Judges William J. Holloway Jr. and Stephanie K. Seymour of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit and Federal District Judge Luther L. Bohannon, who was sitting specially on the appellate court. The court has its headquarters at Denver, but these three judges sit in Oklahoma. The order required the West Publishing Co. of St. Paul, Minn., "to delay temporarily" publishing the Aug. 25 opinion by Federal District Judge Fred M. Winner of Denver in the permanent bound volumes of West's series, Federal Supplement, pending further consideration of the matter by the appellate court. The order is still in effect. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Where were the protests against these abrogations of our civil liberties? No where, because when it comes to taxes, the government seems to be above the Constitution.