Empowering a federal prosecutor to create crimes out of thin air (II)

"The idea behind laws criminalizing perjury, obstruction of justice, and making false statements to federal investigators, is to ensure the integrity of our legal system by giving targets and witnesses incentives to be truthful. However, when prosecutors use broad, vague laws to entrap people into becoming criminals solely on the basis of their words and actions during an investigation, deeply-rooted constitutional rights are eroded.

The Fifth Amendment protects a criminal defendant from being forced to testify against himself. The rationale behind this constitutional right is that if the government prosecutors are permitted to require a person to testify against himself, he faces a Cruel Trilemma – the choice between telling the truth under oath and implicating himself, lying under oath and committing perjury, or refusing to testify and being held in contempt of court.

Thanks to ancillary crimes like obstruction of justice and making false statements, if you find yourself embroiled (as a witness or a target) in a federal criminal investigation, you now face a new version of the Cruel Trilemma.

If you cooperate with federal investigators, everything you say will be used against you to indict and prosecute you. If you refuse to cooperate, you risk indictment and prosecution for ancillary crimes like obstruction of justice. If you speak at all to federal investigators, your words can be twisted into ancillary crimes of perjury or making false statements. It’s a no-win situation against which our Constitution was intended to protect us." What Goes Around, Comes Around by William L. Anderson and Candice E. Jackson