Immunity in exchange for testimony Suppose John Doe is on trial for murder and Jane Smith is called as a witness. Suppose some question prompts Jane to take the fifth against self incrimination. My understanding is that the prosecution can offer blanket immunity to Jane. What happens if the prosecution offers blanket immunity to Jane, and then Jane admits to the murder and describes how she framed John? Is she free from prosecution for the crime of murder? Or can she only be immunized against other crimes, not the crimes that John has been charged with?
When you say "blanket immunity," I assume you're talking about transactional immunity -- the witness cannot ever be prosecuted for any crimes they testified about. This immunity is actually broader than that required by the US Constitution (although some states do require it). However, if it's provided, it absolutely covers crimes connected to what John is accused of. One very common use of immunity is to give a co-conspirator immunity to testify against another co-conspirator being charged with conspiracy. If transactional immunity wouldn't cover that conspiracy charge, it would pretty much defeat the purpose.
Can an attorney plead the 5th if attorney-client privilege is pierced? Yes. But if the prosecutor offers the attorney &quot;use immunity&quot; for the testimony (i.e. a binding promise that the attorney's own testimony won't be used against that attorney), then the 5th Amendment privilege can be overcome as well. In other words, the prosecutor can unilaterally force an attorney to waive his or her fifth amendment rights by granting the attorney immunity from having that testimony used against the attorney, even if the attorney doesn't want to do that. This is established, for example, as noted in the comments by bdb484, by the case of Kastigar v. United States, 406 U.S. 441, (1972) (“The United States can compel testimony from an unwilling witness who invokes the Fifth Amendment privilege against compulsory self-incrimination by conferring immunity”).
Regardless of whether a defendant is a wife or husband in relation to a potential witness, the latter can always refuse to say jack or just go with the &quot;I can't recall&quot; thing. What, will they torture them? What's the point of these &quot;privileges&quot; then? There are actually two separate spousal privileges, the confidential communications privilege and the testimonial privilege. Confidential communications with a spouse are not admissible in evidence, even if the spouse wants to testify. This privilege is like an attorney-client privilege, or a psychologist-patient privilege, or the privilege that attaches to confessions made to a priest, reflects the long standing assumption that communications made in reliance on a confidential relationship should not be betrayed in court. There are often exceptions to the spousal privilege for domestic violence and child abuse. It applies even if the couple that was married at the time that the communication was made is no longer married. Part of the theory of the confidential communications privilege with a spouse is that these communications wouldn't have happened in the first place but for the privilege, and that communications between spouses serve a socially desirable end overall that should be encouraged, by strengthening marriages. The testimonial privilege is the privilege against testifying against a current spouse. In some jurisdictions this belongs to the testifying spouse, and in some jurisdictions it belongs to the spouse testified against. In Florida, it belongs to the testifying spouse in federal court and is not available in state court at all. This applies only to a current spouse and is designed to avoid forcing someone to have to choose between obeying the law and loyalty to their spouse. This usually has more exceptions than the confidential communications privilege and some jurisdictions don't have it at all. The law presumes that people who testify under oath will tell the truth and retains the right to punish them for contempt of court or perjury if they do not. The fact that someone can lie on the stand in ways that sometimes can't be caught is besides the point of whether it is fair to force a spouse to do that. Historically one goal has been to prevent domestic violence against a testifying spouse that might occur if the testifying spouse testifies truthfully but negatively against their non-testifying spouse. Also, there is a sense that the testimony offered may have more to do with the health of the marriage (being more or less favorable based upon that without regard to whether the testimony is truthful) and hence isn't reliable. It also prevent discovery in the course of a lawsuit from one's spouse, which could otherwise be used as a dirty litigation tactic to impact a litigant's family in a civil case primarily for purposes of harassment. Contempt of court sanctions against non-cooperative witnesses are not uncommon. Lots of witnesses aren't very sophisticated and aren't good at paying attention. When you start answering &quot;I don't know&quot; regarding your address, when the last time you saw your spouse in person, what kind of car you have, and whether you know what a copying machine is, it is often pretty easy to spot an intentionally uncooperative witness. Often there are prior unsworn statements or the witness is crystal clear on some points and yet claims no recollection on others. Procedurally, if the judge is convinced that someone is trying to obstruct the court a judge makes a finding of fact to that effect based upon observations that could support that conclusion in the testimony and evidence, higher courts on appeal have to defer to those findings. Appellate courts can't second guess trial court credibility determinations. So, it is a lot easier to establish grounds for contempt of court than one might theoretically expect. Perjury prosecutions are exceedingly rare (on the order of 1 per 200,000 people per year), and a majority of those prosecutions do not involve court testimony. But the legal prospect of being convicted of a felony for lying under oath in nonetheless a powerful one because a lot of tactical and practical decisions in court are based upon worst case scenarios, and it does happen now and then, a few times a year at least, in most states.
The defense lawyer has the duty to do the best for his client. The client will be convicted if he or she is guilty beyond reasonable doubt. If the lawyer can create a reasonable doubt and manages to free his client then he has done a good job. So yes, if the lawyer knows that some other person might have committed the crime, to the degree that it creates reasonable doubt, then the lawyer must raise this. Of course if it turns out that there is just some phantasist making wild accusations, that might not be helpful.
There are two kinds of immunity: absolute and qualified. Absolute immunity is limited to the official discretionary acts of judges, prosecutors in the litigation process (but not in the investigatory process) and the President. And, in the cases of judges and prosecutors this is only immunity from civil liability and not criminal liability. Thus, for judges the scope of absolute immunity extends to legal rulings and conduct related to being a judge in a courtroom. In the case of a prosecutor, it pertains to litigation conduct (but not conduct physically dealing with a defendant or investigating a crime). This is usually an open and shut question which can be determined on the face of the legal complaint against the official. Only the President has relatively broad kinds of activities covered and his saying he is immune doesn't mean that a judge trying a case will agree with him. If he's murdering his wife, no judge will believe that he's acting in his official capacity to do so. Other government officials generally have only "qualified immunity" which means that they have liability if they intentionally violate clearly established law, which basically means that there is a binding judicial precedent governing the facts and circumstances at issue.
Your silence can be used against you: this is known as an adoptive admission. It is an exception to the hearsay rule, and is based on the premise that if a person hears and understands an accusation against them (even framed very indirectly), and &quot;adopts&quot; the truth of the accusation by directly acting in a certain way or by failing to dispute the accusation, this can be introduced as a form of admitting to the accusation. For instance, B might say to A &quot;I laughed when you shot Smith in the foot&quot; and A might say &quot;That was pretty funny, right&quot;, that can be admitted and interpreted as a confession. The same goes for A saying nothing. What's crucial is that the accusation has to be made in the defendant's presence, they must hear and understand it, they must be able to deny the accusation and it would be natural to deny the accusation. There is a relationship between this and the Fifth Amendment, see Salinas v. Texas (and prior law), that &quot;To prevent the privilege against self-incrimination from shielding information not properly within its scope, a witness who “‘desires the protection of the privilege . . . must claim it’&quot;. During a non-custodial interview, defendant was asked asked if his shotgun “would match the shells recovered at the scene of the murder”, and he said nothing (and actually gave non-verbal indicators that the accusation was true). He did not invoke his right to silence, thus the court reasoned that &quot;Because he failed to do so, the prosecution’s use of his noncustodial silence did not violate the Fifth Amendment&quot;.
Relying on this version, proof of truth is only allowed in order to establish a "public interest" defense or for a "necessary defense"; but also "if an official is charged with the commission of an act in the exercise of his office". Good luck with "necessary defense". It is not a defense to say "But what I said is true". However, if the defamed person has been convicted in court of said act (the defamatory statement) then there can be no punishment.
If a defendant has committed a crime, they would choose to self-represent to ensure that no one else would know about the circumstances of their crime. Although lawyers are ethically bound to not disclose information that would not be in the interest of their client, the decision to breach this duty would be up to the sole discretion of the individual in question. In cases where the exchanged information may used to provide evidence against the client, the lawyer is compelled to disclose the truth to the courts/law enforcement. This is deeply misguided. Criminal defense lawyers usually represent people who are guilty and there is no ethical problem with doing so, nor does this mean that the lawyer will disclose privileged information that is prejudicial to the defendant in the course of the representation. The notion that a lawyer would be compelled to testify against his client to the courts/law enforcement is simply not how the system works. It is true that a lawyer cannot ethically put you on the stand to offer testimony when the lawyer knows that your testimony to the court will be an outright flat lie, and that this lie is your strategy to prevail in your defense, but that is the sole meaningful limitation on what a lawyer can do for you. However, I can't think of a single instance, in which a desire to defend yourself at trial with a lie has caused someone to represent themselves. Usually, someone with that kind of motive will simply lie to their lawyer as well. It never makes sense to represent yourself if you are innocent and want to be acquitted of the charges against you. But, keep in mind that this is a small subset of all criminal defendants. Criminal defendants are overwhelmingly guilty of something. Usually, a criminal defense lawyer works to either exploit prosecution mistakes or lack of knowledge that prevent the prosecution from proving that guilt, or work to make sure that the defendant is not convicted of a more serious crime than the one committed, and/or work to see to it that their client does not receive an unnecessarily harsh sentence when alternatives are available. In real life, people represent usually themselves, either because they are denied access to counsel (which can be done in a criminal cases where the prosecutor waives the right to seek incarceration as a sentence), or because they are "crazy". Many people who represent themselves in a criminal cases do so because they want to proudly claim that they committed the crime as a means of obtaining of forum for public recognition of what they believe was righteous action even if this could lead to their death. Many terrorists, domestic and foreign, fall into this category. For example, the fellow committed a massacre at a Colorado abortion clinic tried to do this (if I recall correctly, he was later found incompetent to face a trial and has been committed to a mental institution until he becomes competent, if ever). Other people represent themselves out of a strongly felt guilt that they feel a moral duty to confess to, even if this means that they will face severe punishment for doing so. One subset of this group of people are people known as "death penalty volunteers" who try to get sentenced to death and try to waive all appeals and post-trial review. Sometimes they also plead guilty in the belief (often, but not always, inaccurate) that their swift guilty plea when they aren't actually guilty will protect someone else whom they know to be actually guilty. Other people represent themselves because they have deeply held, but paranoid and inaccurate views about the legal system such as members of the "Sovereign Citizens Movement" who think that if they say the "magic words" that they cannot be convicted and that lawyers are a part of a conspiracy designed to prevent them from doing so. Another situation that comes up is when an affluent person who is not entitled to a public defender as a result, chooses to represent themselves, usually with respect to a fairly minor charge like a traffic violation that carries a risk for a short term of incarceration, to save money. But, this is rarely a wise choice. But, unless you plan on pleading guilty or being found guilty at trial, self-representation does not make sense, and even if you plan on pleading guilty, a lawyer is usually worth it. For example, even if the direct consequence of a guilty plea is minor, the collateral consequences of that conviction (e.g. loss of eligibility to work in certain jobs and/or deportation and/or loss of a right to own a firearm) may be consequential and something that a non-lawyer would not realize was happening. Or, maybe you think you are guilty of crime X so there is no point in fighting the charges, but actually, the language of that statute has been defined in a manner that means you are really only guilty of less serious crime Y.