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New Kensington Detective Lt. Jim Klein climbed up and down the emotional spectrum from anger to disgust to frustration Friday.

Frustration finally took hold as Klein sat in his office discussing how, about an hour before, police were forced to withdraw charges against two New Kensington men accused of trying to kill a third city man.

You feel like you've had your heart ripped out, and now you're fearful of what might happen next if this beef hasn't been settled, Klein said.

This is not on us, Klein said firmly. We're doing our job.

He said the charges were dropped because the shooting victim, Jadrian Race Toochy Wade, refused to testify, Klein said. We were even exploring the possibility of giving him immunity.

He said that was because Wade, 21, had indicated he would invoke his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination if he testified.

But we were advised by Mr. Wade's attorney that he wasn't even able to meet with Mr. Wade to discuss what he was seeking immunity for, Klein said.

When we were at the magistrate's a couple of weeks ago, the victim had an attorney, and the attorney advised me the cIient would not testify on Fifth Amendment grounds, said Westmoreland County Assistant District Attorney Larry Koenig. In other words, him testifying might incriminate him on other matters, including the shooting, itself. He did not tell myself or Detective Klein that himself, but his attorney did, and we had to respect that.

Wade's attorney, Fred Rabner of Pittsburgh, did not return a Valley News Dispatch reporter's call seeking comment for this story.

A Woodmont Avenue resident, Wade was shot three times in Proctor Alley around 1:30 a.m. on Aug. 3.

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New Kensington shooting victim refuses to testify; charges withdrawn

LANSDALE >> A Lansdale man accused of a harrowing domestic assault last month during which police said he choked his pregnant girlfriend, threatened to kill her, and then tied her up and told her she was going to watch him die as he shot up heroin was ordered Nov. 20 to stand trial on several criminal counts after a dramatic preliminary hearing in which the alleged victim took the witness stand, unsuccessfully tried to plead the Fifth Amendment to keep from testifying, then recanted the statement she gave to detectives on the day of the alleged incident.

Steven DiPanfilo, 33, of the 800 block of Derstine Avenue, faces trial on two counts of misdemeanor simple assault, one count each of misdemeanor terroristic threats, misdemeanor recklessly endangering another person and misdemeanor false imprisonment, and summary counts of harassment and disorderly conduct.

Sitting at the defendants table inside Lansdale District Judge Harold Boreks courtroom next to his attorney, Robert McGuckin, DiPanfilo who is free on $25,000 bond drew Boreks ire early in the proceedings when, after McGuckin objected to a Lansdale police detective taking the stand to read the entire statement given by the victim but was overruled by the judge, DiPanfilo began to loudly object as well.

Youre going to get a $100,000 bail if you continue, Borek snapped as DiPanfilo sank bank into his chair.

The detective then read the statement in full while DiPanfilo and the victim, who had been subpoenaed to appear at the hearing and sat behind the prosecutors table, both stared at the floor.

According to the statement, the woman said that in the early morning hours of Oct. 30, DiPanfilo woke her up and began arguing with her about their relationship the altercation escalated to the point where he told the woman he was going to knock her [expletive] teeth in, then grabbed her, put his hand over her mouth and held her down on the bed.

After telling the woman to be quiet, DiPanfilo took his hand off the womans mouth and put both hands around her throat and started choking her, while getting on top of her and preventing her from moving.

He then grabbed the woman by the hair and yanked her to the edge of the bed, tied her hands together with a black T-shirt and told her she was going to watch him die because I was a liar and a cheater, according to the statement, as he prepared a syringe full of what she believed to be heroin and injected himself, then kept her tied up against the bed for a few hours while he nodded in and out from the effects of the drug,

During the entirety of the incident, according to her statement, the woman repeatedly begged DiPanfilo to let her go and to let her get her twin 11-year-old sons who were asleep in the house out of the residence, but he said to her, Sit the [expletive] down, you are not going anywhere and that he would kill her if she didnt shut up.

She finally got out of the residence with her two boys and officers responded to the home around 7:30 a.m., police said. Continued...

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Trial ordered for Lansdale man accused of harrowing domestic assault incident

Decrypting Your Devices (The Fifth Amendment Privilege)
Topics: The Fifth Amendment privilege, compelled decryption, passwords Source: This video is archived from Surveillance Law, first offered by Stanford Law Sc...

By: Jonathan Mayer

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Decrypting Your Devices (The Fifth Amendment Privilege) - Video

In more than four decades as a New York City dentist, Irving Peress pulled teeth and filled cavities in unremarkable obscurity.

But for a few months 60 years ago, he was the focus of national attention: exhibit A in Sen. Joseph R. McCarthys campaign to warn the nation of the communist threat to the American way of life and the extent to which it had already penetrated the countrys vital institutions.

Dr. Peress, who died Nov.13 at 97, was a primary target in McCarthys drive to ferret out the communist fifth column in the U.S. Army, into which the dentist had been drafted during the Korean War.

He was commissioned an officer in 1952 and signed an oath affirming that he had never been a member of an organization that sought to overthrow the government by unconstitutional means.

But he invoked his Fifth Amendment right to protection against self-incrimination when asked if he had ever been a member of the Communist Party or any affiliated body. This got him put under Army surveillance, but he was promoted nevertheless from captain to major in October 1953.

An anonymous source told the Senates Government Operations Committee about it. McCarthy, a Wisconsin Republican sitting on the committee and serving as chairman of its subcommittee on investigations, decided to hold hearings into communist saturation of the Army.

He wanted to know: How could someone under surveillance for communist connections get a promotion in the Army? This looked like yet another example of coddling communists, the senator said, adding that there was somewhere at the Pentagon a secret master who had somehow engineered Dr. Peresss promotion.

In hotbeds of anti-communism around the nation, the question was asked: Who promoted Dr. Peress?

Several times during his testimony before McCarthys committee, Dr. Peress invoked the Fifth Amendment. McCarthy called him a Fifth Amendment communist. Dr. Peress said anyone attacking him for exercising this right was himself guilty of subversion. He repeated that he never sought the violent overthrow of the U.S. government.

To McCarthy, Dr. Peress remained the key to the deliberate Communist infiltration of our Armed Forces.

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Irving Peress, dentist who was subject of Sen. Joseph McCarthys hearings, dies at 97

As she prepared to testify before a grand jury investigating improper leaks to the media, Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen G. Kane acknowledged Monday that her office had released information but said it broke no laws.

"I will tell the special prosecutor the truth and the facts surrounding the disclosure of information to the public that was done in a way that did not violate statutory or case law regarding grand jury secrecy," Kane said, reading a prepared statement.

She spoke as she walked into an office building outside of Norristown where a grand jury is examining if Kane or her office improperly released sealed grand jury information to embarrass a political foe.

Kane called her grand jury appearance "the worst-kept secret of Pennsylvania."

Accompanied by two high-profile attorneys - New York criminal defense lawyer Gerald Shargel and former White House aide Lanny Davis - Kane declined to elaborate on her statement or take questions.

Davis, a former counsel to President Clinton, said she did not intend to invoke her Fifth Amendment right to refuse to answer questions.

The Inquirer has reported that special prosecutor Thomas Carluccio is examining whether Kane's office leaked secret information to The Philadelphia Daily News about a 2009 investigation, handled by her Republican predecessors, into the finances of former NAACP head J. Whyatt Mondesire.

The Daily News reported that Kane's office was trying to determine why the 2009 investigation did not result in any charges.

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Kane acknowledges leak, says it did not break law