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Historical ordering aside, the Fifth Amendment is easily one of the top 10 amendments to the Constitution so good, in fact, that it inspired one of the best court sketch comedy bits. One of the many things it affords is the right against self-incrimination: no person can be compelled in a criminal case to be a witness against themselves. That said, the provision only activates when theres a consequence to being your own star witness. Once that worry gets waived, throwing up the Fifth is an easy way to get thrown behind bars for not listening. From AJC:

A major witness in the states case against Atlanta-rapper Young Thug and five of his alleged associates was taken into custody after Judge Ural Glanville held him in contempt of court for refusing to testify.

Kenneth Copeland, also known as Lil Woody, was subpoenaed to testify Friday morning. Before the jury was brought out, Copelands attorney John Melnick told Glanville that Copeland did not wish to cooperate or testify and planned to exercise his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination. Mr. Copeland, given the fact you have invoked your Fifth Amendment privilege but the state has already given you immunitythis court holds you in willful contempt and well see you on Monday, [Judge] Glanville told Copeland.

You can see the interaction for yourself here:

If youve been following the YSL RICO trial, you know that this thing has been shenanigans heavy since the start. Surprisingly enough, the short stint behind bars sufficed to get Copeland with the program:

Things seem to be normal for now but, given this trials history, something else will go wrong within the next appearance or two.

Young Thug trial: State Witness Held In Contempt, Taken Into Custody [AJC]

Chris Williams became a social media manager and assistant editor for Above the Law in June 2021. Prior to joining the staff, he moonlighted as a minor Memelord in the Facebook groupLaw School Memes for Edgy T14s. He endured Missouri long enough to graduate from Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. He is a former boatbuilder who cannot swim,a published author on critical race theory, philosophy, and humor, and has a love for cycling that occasionally annoys his peers. You can reach him by email atcwilliams@abovethelaw.comand by tweet at@WritesForRent.

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That's Not How Pleading The Fifth Works - Above the Law

Kenneth Copeland aka Lil Woody was arrested on contempt of court charges on June 7, 2024. He is one of the witnesses in the Young Thug/ YSL RICO trial. The rapper invoked his Fifth Amendment right to avoid testifying against Young Thug and circumvent self-incrimination.

Copeland showed agitation after being called to the stand to testify, as reported by 11 Alive. When the attorney representing the state asked Copeland his age, he replied "I'm grown. I'm an adult." When the attorney asked him how old the rapper was in terms of years, he pleaded the fifth (refusal to answer questions).

This resulted in presiding Jude Ural Glanville directing the arrest of Lil Woody for contempt of court and excusing the jury. According to FOX 5 Atlanta, the judge mentioned that Copeland is ordered to testify on Monday.

Young Thug's arrest took place on May 9, 2022, and the rapper has been in jail for over a year and has been repeatedly denied bail. How Lil Woody came into the picture dates back to October 2021 when Copeland was arrested in Fulton County with a loaded gun in his car.

FOX 5 Atlanta reported that Copeland gave information to the police regarding future and previous crimes after his arrest and added that he would help get a confession from Thug.

Moreover, the video of Copeland's interaction with the police was leaked to the media. New York Times music reporter, Joe Coscarelli, filed a motion for mistrial after the leak. Young Thug's lawyer told Coscarelli that the release of the video harms his client, calling Copeland's statements "just stories".

In the recent hearing on June 7, 2024, Woody was arrested for wilful contempt, given that he was granted immunity by the prosecution in return for his testimony. Moreover, Judge Glanville began the proceeding by asking Copeland whether he was aware of his immunity, to which he agreed.

Ensuring that his immunity and duty towards testifying were important, the judge also stated:

After Lil Woody's arrest was directed, Thug's attorney Brian Steel filed for a mistrial claiming that Copeland pleading the Fifth Amendment was already known. However, Judge Glenville pointed out that Copeland refused to answer after agreeing to testify, denying the motion for mistrial.

Moreover, Law&Crime's X network (formerly Twitter) mentioned in a post that Copeland's attorney went back and talked to him after the incident and will have another lawyer appear on his behalf on Monday (June 10, 2024). However, Lil Woody intends to assert the Fifth Amendment again.

According to the Law&Crime Network, some reports suggest Lil Woody implicated Young Thug in a murder plot to protect himself from legal consequences, however, the claims are disputed by Copeland.

In other news, Young Thug is accused by Fulton County of co-founding and leading Young Slime Life, also known as the YSL gang. The charges against Young Thug include violation of the Georgia Controlled Substances Act, participation in criminal street gang activity, and possession of a machine gun amongst other charges.

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Why was Lil Woody arrested? Rapper invokes Fifth Amendment against self-incrimination to avoid testifying in Young ... - Sportskeeda

As former President Donald J. Trumps criminal trial winds down, a center-left group is trying to goad the Republican presidential candidate into testifying.

Take the stand, Donald, or admit youre a coward, blares a new ad from the group, Third Way, which highlights Mr. Trumps past comment that if youre innocent, why are you taking the Fifth Amendment?

The five-figure digital ad buy is running in all the places Trump will be, said Matt Bennett, a co-founder of Third Way. He said the spot would run in New York, especially around Trump Tower and the courthouse, Mar-a-Lago, and in Dallas near the National Rifle Association meeting where Mr. Trump is expected to speak on Saturday.

He has talked tough for years about how only guilty people and mobsters take the Fifth, Mr. Bennett said. Now it appears hes going to do that himself, and we wanted to remind him of that and see if we could taunt him into testifying, frankly, because it might not go well for him if he did that.

Mr. Trumps lawyers told the judge Thursday that he had yet to decide whether he would testify. Mr. Trump has invoked the Fifth Amendment before.

Mr. Trump is charged in this trial with falsifying 34 business records related to the reimbursement of a hush-money payment to a porn star, Stormy Daniels. He has denied the charges.

The ad buy was first reported by Politico.

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New Ad Taunts Trump: 'Take the Stand, Donald, or Admit You're a Coward' - The New York Times

When a political fever runs hot among government officials, the Bill of Rights is often one of the first casualties. Few fevers have been as hot as the Democrats reaction to January 6.

It is no surprise, then, that the investigation by Democrat Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes, like that of the Congressional Select Committee in 2022, obliterated a sacred norm. In this case, the chalk outline is around the Fifth Amendment.

I offer this observation as one who recently was compelled to appear in front of an Arizona state grand jury. The sole purpose is for me to repeat my prior invocation of my 5th Amendment right to remain silent in connection with an investigation into my service as an alternate elector for President Trump in 2020. This follows the shameful spectacle of Congress House January 6 Select Committee using footage from its investigatory video depositions to produce a slick TV show in advance of the 2022 elections to publicly shame Republican witnesses who invoked their 5th Amendment rights.

The Bill of Rights were inserted into the Constitution to protect our essential rights, and the Fourteenth Amendment applies them to the states. The Fifth Amendment contains powerful defenses against abuses of power. It includes the right to be indicted by a grand jury for serious crimes instead of at the whim of a prosecutor, prohibits the government from prosecuting someone twice for the same offense, guarantees due process when the government tries to take your life, freedom, or property, and requires the government to pay for any property it takes from you. The Fifth Amendment has one more essential protection: the government cannot force you to testify against yourself.

Importantly, the Supreme Court held in Grunewald v. United States that one of this privileges basic functions is to protect innocent men who otherwise might be ensnared by ambiguous circumstances. The circumstances involving electors in the immediate aftermath of the 2020 election were indeed ambiguous. Alternate electors had been used in Hawaii in 1960, and the votes of John F. Kennedys alternates were ultimately validated long after the election. The day after the 2020 election, liberal commentators Van Jones and Larry Lessig published their opinion on CNN that Biden too should select alternate electors in Pennsylvania because Trump was leading in that states ballot count and the Democrats should contest the election.

Speaking of ambiguity, exactly what crime Attorney General Mayes is investigating was unclear from the face of the subpoena I received: It provided no notice of the authority of the Attorney General to convene this particular grand jury, no notice of the topic being investigated or the laws allegedly broken, and yet it said that I was a target of the investigation and must testify.

Concern that Mayes is overstepping her authority for political gain is not mere speculation. Before her election in 2022, she campaigned on her certainty before her investigation that Arizonas alternate electors committed a crime. Recently, Mayes declared that Democrat attorneys general such as herself absolutely have to get President Biden re-elected. With Arizonas elections only a few months away, consider that Arizonas investigation is somehow still ongoing nearly three and a half years after the events at issue, that other states and the federal government investigated and made their prosecutorial decisions long ago, and Mayes transparently told the press last year that, with regard to the investigation, Were going to make sure that we do it on our timetable.

For these reasons, though I maintain my innocence of any crime, I invoked my 5th Amendment right not to be compelled to testify against myself. Longstanding tradition and practice in both state and federal proceedings provides that once an individual subpoenaed by a grand jury informs the prosecution that the individual intends to assert the Fifth Amendment privilege not to testify, the individual is not compelled to appear before a grand jury for the purpose of invoking the privilege. And yet, I and other Republican witnesses were paraded in front of the grand jury solely to invoke our rights. This has rightly provoked the ridicule of both prosecutors and defense counsel.

There is no substantive evidence in the act of invoking ones Fifth Amendment rights. To force a witness to do so in front of the grand jury is an improper attempt to bias the grand jury and embarrass the witness. In some jurisdictions like the District of Columbia, a lawyer can be disciplined for forcing a witness to appear only to invoke their Fifth Amendment right.

The damage Democrats like Kris Mayes are inflicting on the 5th Amendment, and especially their normalization of its violation for political gain, is shameful and an affront to our Constitution. Repairing this damage must be a priority for Republicans this election year.

* * *

Jake Hoffmanis an Arizona statesenatorin Arizonas 15th district.

NOTE: DC Bar Ethics Opinion 31 is found on page 91 of the linked reference.

The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

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How Democrats In Arizona Are Damaging The Fifth Amendment - The Daily Wire

While pundits and lawyers cross swords over free speech on social media, a quieter yet critically important principle is being ignored: property rights. In addition to violating the First Amendment, the rush to force social media platforms to host content violates the Fifth Amendment as wellin particular, the Takings Clause.

The Takings Clause says that government shall not take private property "for public use, without just compensation." While many are familiar with the clause's importance when the government wants to seize land through eminent domain, courts have also applied this right as a limit on the ability to overregulate property. For example, if a beach town requires the owners of oceanfront properties to let the public walk across their yards to get to the beach, this would require compensation, because the regulation effectively takes the property owner's right to exclude, a cornerstone of ownership.

Likewise, the Takings Clause shields social media platforms from regulations requiring they host content or users they want to exclude. These platforms have as much right to eject unwelcome digital interlopers as homeowners do to stop the government from using their yard as a public right of wayunless they are given just compensation. If states intend to force social media apps to host users and content against their wishes, they will have to pay for it.

Both state and federal laws already treat online platforms as property. All states criminalize unauthorized access to computer systems, often expressly framing these crimes as trespass. Platforms defend their territory with encryption, authentication, firewalls, terms of service, and other digital fences. Laws affirming online platforms as protectable property, alongside the platforms' own fortifications, clearly categorize them as "private property" under the Takings Clause.

Laws that mandate online platforms to accept certain content or users effectively invade private property. And the courts have established that when the government grants third parties access to private property without the owner's consent, that requires compensation. The federal government had to pay a private marina owner in Hawaii before it could be compelled to allow public boating access. Similarly, the Supreme Court ruled just a few years ago that California had to compensate employers after it forced them to let union representatives access their property.

These precedents apply to content moderation laws like those currently challenged on First Amendment grounds. Texas's law, which prohibits "censor[ing] a user, a user's expression, or a user's ability to receive the expression of another" based on viewpoint, does to digital spaces what unlawful regulations do to physical spacesit negates the platform's right to determine its occupants.

One might argue that digital exclusions aren't as tangible as physical ones. Yet imagine a law that mandates private businesses to display campaign signs in their storefront windows. This law would not just violate the businesses' speech rights; it would also clearly violate their property rights to control their own space.

Supporters of regulating social media might point to the Supreme Court's decision in Pruneyard Shopping Center v. Robins, where the Court rejected a takings claim by a shopping mall forced to allow activists to distribute leaflets. The Court reasoned that a few activists wouldn't significantly disrupt a mall's essential purpose. The Court recently indicated that Pruneyard was an exceptional case because shopping malls are "generally open to the public" and lack the kind of terms of service that govern social media platforms.

Pruneyard was wrong to deny shopping malls the right to exclude, but, regardless of that decision, online platforms are not public malls. The core function of a shopping mall is to invite the public to shop. The essence of social media is speech and content. Interference with a platform's ability to control content affects its core purpose. Even owners of traditional public spaces can exclude activities that contradict their business's purpose. Social media platforms should be afforded similar rights under property law.

A win under the Takings Clause would mean that the government cannot require social media platforms to host all content unless they pay for the privilege. Compensation could be hard to calculate, given that the interference is ongoing and the economic effects are complex. Whatever the dollar amount, politicians will struggle to convince taxpayers to commit to a continuous cash funnel from their pockets to Big Tech. A win under the Takings Clause would likely make many regulators rethink their strategies.

As the early abolitionist Arthur Lee once said, property is the "guardian of every other right." Property offers a personal dominion free from undue influence or controlspaces we can each shape to reflect our own values. In defending this for online platforms, we uphold the foundation of liberty and innovation.

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Social Media Platforms Have Property Rights Too - Reason