Bell Grand Jury Experience

[mean-green at hushmail.com]

John,


>Others have told me about being warned by Robb London
about perjury and self-incrimination during testimony. Lawyers
say this is standard, but possibly lethal.

>I didn't know that you can submit a sworn statement beforehand
that all questions will go unanswered to avoid self-incrimination
and that the US Attorneys Manual recommends excusing a
grand jury witness who does that. See the USAM on this:

>   http://cryptome.org/grand-jury.htm

Interesting.  This seems considerably at odds with the position taken by 
courts regarding use of 5th Amendment in IRS cases, which restrict the right 
of those testifying (information on tax forms is sworn and therefore treated 
as testimony) to specific items of inquiry and do not permit wholesale use 
of the 5th.

>From U.S. vs. Sullivan.

"If the form of return provided called for answers that the defendant was 
privileged from making he could have raised the objection in the return,
 but could not on that account refuse to make any return at all. We are 
not called on to decide what, if anything, he might have withheld. Most 
of the items warranted no compaint. It would be an extreme if not an extravagant 
application [274 U.S. 259, 264] of the Fifth Amendment to say that it authorized 
a man to refuse to state the amount of his income because it had been made 
in crime. But if the defendant desired to test that or any other point he 
should have tested it in the return so that it could be passed upon. He 
could not draw a conjurer's circle around the whole matter by his own declaration 
that to write any word upon the government blank would bring him into danger 
of the law. Mason v. United States, 244 U.S. 362 , 37 S. Ct. 621; United 
States ex rel. Vajtauer v. Commissioner of Immigration ( January 3, 1927) 
273 U.S. 103 , 47 S. Ct. 302. In this case the defendant did not even make 
a declaration, he simply abstained from making a return. See further the 
decision of the Privy Council, Minister of Finance v. Smith (1927) A. C. 
193."

http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?navby=case&court=US&vol=274&page=259