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If I understand the parent post, it's basically protecting you against the "leading questions" of investigation...? You opening the safe cannot be used as evid
by RangerScience 10y ago
If I understand the parent post, it's basically protecting you against the "leading questions" of investigation...?
You opening the safe cannot be used as evidence against you; that would cause your action to be "testimonial", and protected. The contents of the safe are evidence, and not testimonial.
If I'm understanding this correctly; it would be like saying "open the safe with the illegal weapons in it", and pointing at the safe. If you open it, does that mean you're admitting the weapons are illegal?
- rayiner 10y ago> If I'm understanding this correctly; it would be like saying "open the safe with the illegal weapons in it", and pointing at the safe. If you open it, does that mean you're admitting the weapons are illegal? Kind of, yes. The non-contrived situation where this comes up is with subpoenas. A subpoena will request specific documents or specific kinds of documents. Responding to the subpoena requires making judgments about what documents are responsive to the request, and there is an implicit assertion that documents produced fall within the scope of the subpoena request. So the government cannot, for example, make you "produce all accounting records containing false numbers." Producing documents in response to that comes with the implicit admission that the accounting records are false. The government can eliminate that problem simply by asking for all accounting records.