Quotes & Sayings About Fifth Amendment

Only in America - the land of the free - can an innocent person be forced to plead the Fifth for exercising their First Amendment rights. Say what you want, but you better shut your fucking pie hole if it offends someone's delicate sensibilities. — Kendall Grey

Civil asset forfeiture was originally intended as a way to cripple organized crime through the seizure of property used in a criminal enterprise. Regrettably, it has become a tool for unscrupulous law enforcement officials, acting without due process, to profit by destroying the livelihood of innocent individuals, many of whom never recover the lawful assets taken from them. When the rights of the innocent can be so easily violated, no one's rights are safe. We call on Congress and state legislatures to enact reforms to protect law-abiding citizens against abusive asset forfeiture tactics. — Republican Party

You can assert a fifth amendment privilege and not testify. But if you go in and swear to tell the truth, then you better do it. Otherwise, if a prosecutor finds that you have testified in a way that is factually incorrect and you had reason to know that it was factually incorrect, then you're guilty of perjury. — Richard Ben-Veniste

The fifth amendment of the U.S. Constitution guarantees that no private property shall be taken for a public use without the payment of just compensation. — Elton Gallegly

The Fourth and Fifth Amendments of the Constitution, which were established to protect us from unwarranted intrusion by the government into our private lives, may still technically be law but they have been judicially abolished. The Fourth Amendment was written in 1789 in direct response to the arbitrary and unchecked search powers that the British had exercised through general warrants called "writs of assistance", which played a significant part in fomenting the American Revolution. The amendment limits the sate's ability to search and seize to a specific place, time, and event approved by a magistrate. It is impossible to square the bluntness of the Fourth Amendment with the arbitrary search and seizure of all our personal communications. — Chris Hedges

The complexity of modern federal criminal law, codified in several thousand sections of the United States Code and the virtually infinite variety of factual circumstances that might trigger an investigation into a possible violation of the law, make it difficult for anyone to know, in advance, just what particular set of statements might later appear (to a prosecutor) to be relevant to some such investigation. — Stephen G. Breyer

We misread the Fifth Amendment [of Constitution] and have been misreading it for the past three decades. — Joe Biden

Other corporations have asserted Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination as well as asserted that the Fourteenth Amendment - passed after the Civil War to strip slavery from the Constitution - protects their right "against discrimination" by a local community that doesn't want them building a toxic waste incinerator, commercial hog operation, or superstore. — Thom Hartmann

I know that some believe that voluntary prayer in schools should be restricted to a moment of silence. We already have the right to remain silent - we can take our Fifth Amendment. — Ronald Reagan

The 'takings' clause of the Fifth Amendment is for conservatives what the equal protection clause of the 14th is for liberals. — Michael Kinsley

Officers are taught to use all the tricks and lies that courts permit within the scope of the Fifth Amendment's shield against self-incrimination. — David K. Shipler

He has called for a repeal of the Fifth Amendment as it affects the right of private property. — Dixie Lee Ray

If you insist on asking me why I feel the way I do, I plan to take the Fifth Amendment. — Mason Cooley

The Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects against self-incrimination, — John Grisham

Our bill of rights has been shredded. The fourth amendment specifically prohibits the kind of activities the NSA is involved in domestically. The fifth amendment prohibits any president or anyone else from killing anyone without due process. — Ray McGovern

Those are the only two things you should tell the police officer in that context, and they are both in the present tense. (You might as well cooperate with such a request, by the way, because the Fifth Amendment does not normally give you the right to refuse to tell the police your name anyway. That is it. But if the police officer tries to strike up a conversation with you about the past, and where you were thirty minutes earlier, and who you were with, and where you had dinner, and with whom - you will not answer those questions. You will not be rude, but you will always firmly decline, with all due respect, to answer those questions. — James Duane

You do not have to incriminate yourself. But once you assert your innocence, and once you say you didn't do anything wrong, you can't then use the Fifth Amendment to say, 'I'm not answering questions.' — Rush Limbaugh

If you are asked any question by a police officer or a government agent and you realize that it is not in your best interest to answer, you should not mention the Fifth Amendment privilege or tell the police that you wish to exercise your right to avoid incriminating yourself. In this day and age, there is too great a danger that the police and the prosecutor might later persuade the judge to use that statement against you as evidence of your guilt. And if they do, to make matters much worse, you have no guarantee that the FBI agent in your case will not slightly misremember your exact words. — James Duane

Everyone knows that due process means judicial process, and when John Brennan brings him a list of people to be killed this particular week, that's not due process. That's certainly not judicial process. So there's the fifth amendment. Not even George Bush claimed the right to kill American citizens without due process. — Ray McGovern