{"id":9454,"date":"2017-10-11T12:00:20","date_gmt":"2017-10-11T16:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/?p=9454"},"modified":"2017-10-11T12:00:20","modified_gmt":"2017-10-11T16:00:20","slug":"supreme-court-decide-public-employee-self-incrimination-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/2017\/10\/11\/supreme-court-decide-public-employee-self-incrimination-case\/","title":{"rendered":"Supreme Court to Decide Public Employee Self-Incrimination Case"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Lisa Soronen <\/strong>(Lisa Soronen is executive director of the State and Local Legal Center and a frequent contributor to the NCSL Blog on judicial issues.)
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

It has been a while since the U.S. Supreme Court has considered the scope of the Fifth Amendment in a case involving a public employee.<\/p>\n

The Fifth Amendment says no person shall be \u201ccompelled in any criminal case<\/em> to be a witness against himself.\u201d The question the Supreme Court will decide in Hays, Kansas v. Vogt<\/em><\/a> is whether the Fifth Amendment is violated when a public employee\u2019s compelled, self-incriminating statements are used against him or her at a probable cause<\/em> hearing rather than at a trial.<\/em><\/p>\n

In Garrity v. New Jersey<\/em><\/a> (1967) the Supreme Court held that public employers violate the Fifth Amendment when they give employees a choice between \u201cself-incrimination or job forfeiture,\u201d which is what Matthew Vogt claimed happened to him.<\/p>\n

Vogt worked as a police officer for the city of Hays. In an interview with the city of Haysville Vogt disclosed he had kept a knife he obtained in the course of his work as a Hays police officer. Haysville offered Vogt the job but told him he had to tell Hays about the knife and return it. Vogt did so.<\/p>\n

The Hays police chief told Vogt to write a report about the knife; Vogt wrote a vague one-sentence statement. The Hays police chief then told Vogt to write a more detailed statement or he would be fired. Vogt claims this more detailed statement was a compelled, self-incriminating statement. It was used to locate more evidence.<\/p>\n

Vogt was charged with two felonies related to possessing the knife. Per state law, Vogt received a probable cause hearing before trial. Charges were dismissed at the probable cause hearing.<\/p>\n

The federal circuit courts of appeals are divided on whether the Fifth Amendment is violated if compelled, self-incriminating statements are used at legal proceeding taking place before trial. The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals concluded the right against self-incrimination is more than a trial right by looking at the text of the Fifth Amendment, which doesn\u2019t use the term \u201ctrial\u201d or \u201ccriminal prosecution.\u201d<\/p>\n

Also, according to the 10th Circuit, the \u201cFounders\u2019 understanding of the term \u2018case\u2019 suggested the Fifth Amendment encompasses more than the trial itself.\u201d<\/p>\n

States and local governments would benefit from a ruling that a \u201ccriminal case\u201d under the Fifth Amendment only includes a trial. States and local governments can be sued for money damages for violating an employee\u2019s right to be free from self-incrimination. Most cases don\u2019t go to trial but many have pretrial bail hearings, suppression hearings, arraignments, and probable cause hearings.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Source\u00a0\u00a0 ncsl.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Lisa Soronen (Lisa Soronen is executive director of the State and Local Legal Center and a frequent contributor to the NCSL Blog on judicial issues.) It has been a while since the U.S. Supreme […]<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":9455,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,3],"tags":[4311,622],"class_list":{"0":"post-9454","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"category-usa","9":"tag-5th-amendment","10":"tag-supreme-court","11":"pmpro-has-access"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9454","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9454"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9454\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9456,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9454\/revisions\/9456"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9455"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}