If someone under investigation is told they are not a &quot;Criminal Target&quot;, what are the ways that they can later become one? Background Back on April 3rd, the Washington Post reported that Donald Tump was not a Criminal Target in Special Council Mueller's probe. Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III informed President Trump’s attorneys last month that he is continuing to investigate the president but does not consider him a criminal target at this point, according to three people familiar with the discussions. I was curious as to whether one can become a criminal target after they are told that they are not one. The post states that Legal Experts speak of one way: A subject could become a target with his or her own testimony, legal experts warn. Question Given that someone under investigation has been told that they are not a Criminal Target of a probe, what are other events, circumstances, statements, legal actions, etc. would then make someone a Criminal Target?
A subject can become a target, and this happens all the time. The subject/target distinction is not a statement about whether a person has done anything wrong; it's only a statement about how much information the prosecutor has linking you to a crime he is investigating. That means that the subject himself need not do anything to move from one category to the other. Here's guidance from the DOJ's manual for U.S. Attorneys: It is the policy of the Department of Justice to advise a grand jury witness of his or her rights if such witness is a &quot;target&quot; or &quot;subject&quot; of a grand jury investigation. See the Criminal Resource Manual at 160 for a sample target letter. A &quot;target&quot; is a person as to whom the prosecutor or the grand jury has substantial evidence linking him or her to the commission of a crime and who, in the judgment of the prosecutor, is a putative defendant. An officer or employee of an organization which is a target is not automatically considered a target even if such officer's or employee's conduct contributed to the commission of the crime by the target organization. The same lack of automatic target status holds true for organizations which employ, or employed, an officer or employee who is a target. A &quot;subject&quot; of an investigation is a person whose conduct is within the scope of the grand jury's investigation. So the designation changes when the prosecutor has enough information to change it, not necessarily because the subject has done anything new. Imagine a prosecutor investigating a bank robbery. He watches surveillance footage showing a man checking out the bank repeatedly in the days leading up to the robbery. That's enough to bring him &quot;within the scope of the investigation,&quot; but it's not really damning enough to link him to the crime or make him a defendant. So he remains a subject, and the FBI continues to investigate. All sorts of things could happen that might make him a target: someone else implicates him; video footage shows him robbing the bank; he admits to the crime; he denies the crime with an alibi that doesn't check out; he lies about something else, making him a target for making false statements to a federal investigator. Note that the change could come because of something the subject did himself, because of something someone else did, or just because the prosecutor happened upon some new information.
The question says: Callahan used torture to get the location of the hostage out of the suspect, and information acquired by torture is not admissible as evidence. In general, evidence obtained by torture is indeed not admissible in US courts. This is particularly true when the person doing the torture is a police officer. If it is done by a private citizen, with no prompting or encouragement by the police or any part of the government, different rules may apply. See Brown v. Mississippi, 297 U.S. 278 (1936) for the inadmissibility of confessions obtained through torture or physical coercion. The Mapp decision, cited below, would have extended this to information or evidence obtained via torture. The question asks: It was not merely information what Callahan acquired, but the physical body of the victim. Doesn't that change anything? No. If the evidence was obtained unlawfully, then the evidence so obtained and all other evidence or information indirectly obtained through the unlawful act is inadmissible. This is the &quot;Fruit of the poisonous tree&quot; doctrine. It applies just as much to physical evidence as to a confession. &quot;Fruit of the poisonous tree&quot; doctrine is an extension of the &quot;exclusionary rule&quot; and like the basic rule, is intended to deter unlawful actions on the part of law enforcement and government generally, and to ensure that the courts are not complicit in such unlawful actions. The rule was first fully established in US Federal courts in Weeks v. United States, 232 U.S. 383 (1914) although versions of the rule go back before the founding of the United States. The rule was applied to the states in Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643 (1961) although some states applied a version of the rule even before the Weeks decision. There are exceptions, however, notably &quot;inevitable discovery&quot;. That means if other, lawful, investigations already underway would certainly have uncovered the same evidence, then it may be admissible. Another similar exception is the &quot;Independent source doctrine&quot;. This says that when the same evidence is later obtained independently from activities untainted by the initial illegality, it may be admissible. See Nix v. Williams, 467 U.S. 431 (1984), for both of these exceptions. There is also a good-faith exception where a warrant was obtained on invalid grounds but used in good-faith by offers who thought it valid. I do not see that any of these exceptions would apply in the situation described in the question. It does not matter how &quot;clear&quot; the evidence may be. If it is obtained unlawfully, and no exception applies, it will not be admissible. The question asks: In case of the hideout and the rifle, is such a clear evidence still inadmissible? Can't the &quot;hot pursuit&quot; rules be applied? He didn't have time for a warrant, he was running against the clock. The doctrine of&quot;hot pursuit&quot; alone does not justify entering a private dwelling without a warrant, but there are a number of exceptions to the warrant requirement, one of which &quot;Exigent Circumstances&quot; is one, or rather a group of relates exceptions. In Missouri v. McNeely, 569 U.S. 141 (2013), the Supreme Court wrote in its opinion, &quot;A variety of circumstances may give rise to an exigency sufficient to justify a warrantless search, including law enforcement's need to provide emergency assistance to an occupant of a home . . . engage in “hot pursuit” of a fleeing suspect . . . or enter a burning building to put out a fire and investigate its cause.&quot; Thus “hot pursuit” can be an exigent Circumstance and justify a warrentless entry, but this will depend on the precise facts of the case. It is not clear that the circumstances described in the question would qualify. The question asks: even if they decide not to press charges because they are afraid they can't win the trial, can't they at least put the suspect under surveillance? Legally, they probably can. Not even probable cause is required to continue an investigation, or to place a suspected criminal under surveillance There might be reasons other than the law of evidence not to use surveillance, for example if the police fear that the suspect will observe the surveillance and thus be alerted. But this seems like a place where the movie plot may have been unrealistic.
Will he break any laws by saying that (assuming the actual truth cannot be found out)? The statement made outside the courtroom is not itself perjury, since it is not made under oath. But that doesn't mean that there wouldn't be legal consequences. It would be powerful evidence in a perjury prosecution (surely enough for a conviction even standing alone long after the trial is over but within the statute of limitations for perjury in the jurisdiction from the date of the sworn statement, if any), and would be a waiver of 5th Amendment rights against self-incrimination, generally, in the perjury case. It might also be strong evidence (enough to convict standing alone) in a timely obstruction of justice prosecution. This statute of limitations could also run from the date of the sworn statement, or from the date of a false unsworn statement that caused a conviction to be reopened. If the statement made in court was favorable to the prosecution, it might bring these charges after the conviction in the underlying case is final. But, the out of court statement would probably be grounds for the party benefitting from the original statement to seek a mistrial or to have a judgment set aside if the verdict or judgment is consistent with the sworn statement. If the out of court statement was made before the trial was over, the witness could be recalled and the out of court statement could be used to impeach the in court statement. It might constitute a probation or parole violation. If the witness were testifying pursuant to a cooperation agreement, the out of court statement would probably breach the deal and deny the witness the benefit of the cooperation deal. The out of court statement might constitute contempt of court if made while the proceeding in which the statement was made was still pending. Depending on the nature of the statement, the out of court statement might constitute defamation for which some one whose reputation was tarnished might sue for money damages. (There is immunity from civil liability for in court statements.) It would violate the ethical rules of many professions. For example, an attorney would probably be disbarred for doing that. Arguably, in this situation, the statute of limitations could run from the later unsworn statement date rather than the date of the sworn statement. If the witness is a state or federal government employee, this could lead to impeachment proceedings, in the state legislature, or Congress, respectively. The aftermath of the Lewinsky Scandal (link below) involving Bill Clinton touches on many of these possibilities: Further investigation led to charges of perjury and to the impeachment of President Clinton in 1998 by the U.S. House of Representatives. He was subsequently acquitted on all impeachment charges of perjury and obstruction of justice in a 21-day Senate trial. Clinton was held in civil contempt of court by Judge Susan Webber Wright for giving misleading testimony in the Paula Jones case regarding Lewinsky and was also fined $90,000 by Wright. His license to practice law was suspended in Arkansas for five years; shortly thereafter, he was disbarred from presenting cases in front of the United States Supreme Court. Easier and Harder Cases The easier cases are those where it is undeniably clear from other evidence that the witness lied under oath, and the out of court statement merely puts the cherry on top of an already solid perjury case. The hard cases aren't the cases where "the actual truth cannot be found out". Instead, the hard cases are the cases where there is strong evidence that the statement made in court, under oath was true. For example, suppose Ted Cruz is asked in court: "Were you the Zodiac killer?" (A crime ridiculously attributed to him despite the fact that it is something that happened when he was a small child who live many hundreds of miles away.) And he says, "No" in court, but then leaves the courtroom and says in a press conference on the court house steps: "I am the Zodiac killer, I lied about that under oath in court today." Similarly, suppose that a DNA test on a certain blue dress shows a perfect match to President Bill Clinton and Bill Clinton says under oath in court, that the substance tested came from him on a certain day, in a certain place, when a certain person was wearing it, in a certain way (also confirmed by a witness and surveillance video). Then, he leaves the courtroom and says in a press conference on the court house steps: "Someone else was the source of that genetic material. I never met that person, and I was in Kenya on the day alleged and I've never set foot in the White House. I lied about all of this under oath in court today." In these cases, there is no plausible way to make an obstruction of justice or perjury charge stick, or to upset a verdict or judgment consistent with the truthful sworn statement. Contempt of court is still possible, as would professional ethics violations, but other consequences would be less obvious, because the act would come across more as absurd instead of something that genuinely confounds the truth. The legal consequences associated with the conduct in the original post are mostly aimed at sanctioning genuinely fraudulent conduct. Our legal system is more confused about how to respond to lies so blatant that they only amount to feeble and ineffectual gaslighting that no reasonable person familiar with the circumstances would believe (but that might incite crazy conspiracy theory thinking supporters). The harder case would lie in the uncanny valley between a bad joke and a pathetically weak attempt to mislead people, even though the law is clear about how to deal with clear sarcasm and convincing attempts to lie that can't be clearly proven or disproven with other evidence.
Does the party have any legal leverage to engage the police (or other competent authorities apart from private investigators) to help locate the witness and serve the summons on them? Not really. Legal process is not infrequently served by a sheriff's deputy. But the deputy will not generally take any initiative to locate a person to be served beyond what it provided by the litigant. The main reasons to have a sheriff's deputy serve someone with process is the fear that the person served might react violently. Or is it just the party's bad luck that the witness cannot be located and served on? Pretty much.
united-states Bob could do any number of things to try to convince someone to prosecute Alice: call the prosecutor's boss, or the district attorney (or their equivalents in DOJ if it's a federal crime), or his elected representatives; he could also go to the media, or post on social networks... But if none of that works, the article is right: Prosecutors can't be legally compelled to prosecute someone Crime victims don't have any rights to control whether a prosecution happens—the government is the plaintiff. A prosecutor can even file charges over a victim's objections. Federal law and some states have Crime Victims' Rights Acts, which do grant some rights. But note the particularly relevant exception in that law: Nothing in this chapter shall be construed to impair the prosecutorial discretion of the Attorney General or any officer under his direction. This is also a separation of powers issue: the executive branch has the exclusive right to determine how the laws are executed. Neither the legislature nor the judicial branches can compel the executive to prosecute someone. Note that none of this affects Bob's civil remedies: he can still sue Alice for damages. But that won't result in her ending up in prison.
The Secret Service is primarily concerned with protecting the people and information they oversee, not enforcing laws. They have the power to arrest someone for any unlawful conduct, but unless a drug user is presenting as a threat to a protectee, they are unlikely to be arrested by the Secret Service. More likely the Service would simply escort the person off the premises and refer the matter to the DC Metro Police to handle. Edit: Such a case would not be turned over to the US Capitol Police (as originally written) It would most likely be referred to the DC Metropolitan Police Department.Corrected my answer above.
The first thing it depends on is where you live. The US has no law requiring niceness, but perhaps niceness-enforcement exists somewhere in the world. The second thing it depends on is exactly what he does, where and how. If he comes into people's houses uninvited and starts harassing them, that is generally a crime. If he makes nasty remarks to people walking down the street, you can't even sue him. If the person commits in a crime, you can report him anonymously. However, for there to be any prosecution, someone will have to testify in court: anonymous criminal testimony is inadmissible in the US. If there is no crime, just a potential civil action, the part would hire an attorney to file a complaint, etc. and that party would be named (not anonymous), would have to testify, and would also have to have been harmed. The police will not get involved in a civil dispute. Based just on what you have said here, your attorney would very likely say that there is no case to be pursued, and your only solution is to ignore him.
Where the President explicitly tells a newspaper that they should reveal their sources. Is this not illegal in the US? It is not illegal. Well, it would be a U.S. Attorney, rather than the President himself. You're thinking of shield laws, but no such law exists at the federal level. Moreover, although some people might think that the First Amendment ("freedom of the press") would protect a journalist in such a case, the Supreme Court has held that it doesn't, though the government is required to "convincingly show a substantial relation between the information sought and a subject of overriding and compelling state interest". So if a reporter were subpoenaed in federal court to reveal a source, and they couldn't convince a court to quash the subpoena under the Branzburg test, they'd have to either reveal their source or be held in contempt. In practice, many reporters have chosen the latter, and served time in jail rather than reveal the source. For instance, Judith Miller. There've been a number of proposals to create such a federal law, but so far Congress hasn't seen fit to do it. According to the Wikipedia article, every state except Wyoming has some sort of shield protection for journalists, either in statute or case law, though the protections are not necessarily absolute. So a state court or prosecutor would find it much more difficult to enforce such an order.