Fifth Amendment

The former research director of Philip Morris, the nation's largest cigarette maker, invoked the 5th Amendment privilege against self-incrimination more than 100 times in videotaped testimony played for a Minnesota jury on Tuesday. Thomas S.

In a public relations embarrassment for the tobacco industry that could reverberate to Washington, jurors in Minnesota's big tobacco trial Friday began viewing a videotaped deposition in which the former top scientist for Philip Morris Cos. invoked the 5th Amendment 135 times. Despite extraordinary pressure from Philip Morris, Thomas S.

One of the most sought-after witnesses in the campaign fund-raising scandal, Torrance businessman Johnny Chien Chuen Chung, is willing to appear before a congressional committee this week--but only behind closed doors. Chung intends to assert his 5th Amendment rights against self-incrimination, although he holds out the tantalizing prospect that he might testify on some limited topics. In a written offer sent Monday to House investigators, Chung's Santa Monica-based attorney, Brian A.

A former top aide to Assemblyman Scott R. Baugh repeatedly took the 5th Amendment at the legislator's preliminary hearing Monday, refusing to testify about her part in preparing documents linked to alleged violations of the Political Reform Act. Maureen Werft, who served as Baugh's chief of staff and campaign treasurer, stopped testifying and invoked her 5th Amendment protection against self-incrimination when the defense asked about her work as treasurer for Baugh.

Laurie Campbell, the friend of Assemblyman Scott Baugh who ran against him in 1995 as a decoy Democratic candidate, will be offered use immunity to testify at Baugh's preliminary hearing on election law violations, the district attorney's office said Tuesday. Campbell, who could face prosecution for allegedly falsifying her nomination papers in the 1995 special election, cited her Fifth Amendment right to avoid self-incrimination when she was put on the witness stand Sept. 24.

Ruling that a law enforcement officer's constitutional rights against self-incrimination cannot outweigh the needs of a slaying probe, a judge ordered the Ventura County Sheriff's Department on Monday to surrender a deputy's account of the night he fatally shot a drunk intruder. Sheriff's Department attorneys had insisted that Senior Deputy Steven Lengyel's statements to internal investigators about killing Jack Dale Sexton were protected by his 5th Amendment right against self-incrimination.

Five months after fatally shooting a drunken intruder in the back at a neighbor's house, Senior Deputy Steven Lengyel will have his day in court. But unlike a criminal trial, today's hearing will not seek to rule whether Lengyel intentionally killed Jack Dale Sexton in Port Hueneme on Super Bowl Sunday. Lengyel's own department has already cleared him of any wrongdoing in the Jan. 26 shooting and sent him back to work.

Rep. Jay C. Kim would reluctantly invoke his 5th Amendment right against self-incrimination if subpoenaed to testify in the upcoming campaign money-laundering trial of his campaign treasurer, according to a document filed in Los Angeles federal court. In a motion seeking to delay the start of the trial, defense attorney Sherryl E.

In a ruling that affects thousands of immigrants nationwide, a federal judge in Seattle has ordered the Immigration and Naturalization Service to reopen deportation proceedings in cases in which the INS failed to adequately inform individuals of their right to a hearing before deportation. U.S. District Judge John C.

Al Cowlings will not have to testify under oath about his actions or his conversations with football buddy O.J. Simpson during the week after the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Lyle Goldman, a judge ruled Wednesday. Cowlings had invoked his 5th Amendment right against self-incrimination in refusing to answer questions about the tumultuous period between the Brentwood murders on June 12, 1994, and the low-speed chase that culminated in Simpson's arrest on June 17.