How It's Used

"Even before the Enron scandal, which was just then unfolding, the Justice Department and the S.E.C. had been placing tremendous pressure on corporate executives to coöperate with their investigations. The S.E.C., and even private auditors, might hesitate to certify the financial statements of a company headed by someone who wouldn’t coöperate. A directive to prosecutors from Deputy Attorney General Larry D. Thompson suggested that companies should pressure senior employees to testify rather than refuse to answer on Fifth Amendment grounds."

—Jeffrey Toobin, "A Bad Thing: Why Did Martha Stewart Lose?" The New Yorker, March 22, 2004.

"The Army-McCarthy hearings followed a pattern, notes Donald A. Ritchie, associate historian of the Senate. Typically, McCarthy held hearings in executive session first, "like a dress rehearsal," says Mr. Ritchie, who studied the transcripts of the hearings. Mostly McCarthy didn't have any hard evidence against the people he was interrogating; he just hoped to get them to contradict themselves or to take the Fifth Amendment, or to confess."

—Ronald Kessler, "The Real Joe McCarthy," The Wall Street Journal, April 22, 2008.

"He refused to answer questions on the basis that ‘the Bank of America didn’t want me to.’ You can take the Fifth Amendment or you can answer questions. But there’s no Bank of America privilege. The Bank of America doesn’t substitute for the Constitution."

—Andrew Cuomo, Attorney General of the State of New York, quoted in Maureen Dowd, "I Ponied Up for Sheryl Crow?," The New York Times, February 24, 2009.

Also Known As (AKA)

To Plead the Fifth

Links

Related on eAlmanac
The First Amendment
The Second Amendment
The Ten Amendments that Form the Bill of Rights

Beyond eAlmanac
Wikipedia article on Taking the Fifth
The Straight Dope article on "What's the big deal about the Fifth Amendment?"