Opinion ID: 1241994
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Leroy Plummer's Blanket Assertion of his Fifth Amendment Privilege

Text: The longstanding rule of this circuit is that a defendant must take the stand and answer individualized questions in order to invoke his Fifth Amendment privilege. See In re Morganroth, 718 F.2d 161, 167 (6th Cir.1983) (A blanket assertion of the privilege by a witness is not sufficient to meet the reasonable cause requirement and the privilege cannot be claimed in advance of the questions. The privilege must be asserted by a witness with respect to particular questions, and in each instance, the court must determine the propriety of the refusal to testify.). This presumption against blanket assertions of Fifth Amendment privilege is premised on the common sense notion that a judge must know what the witness believes is incriminating in order to evaluate whether the witness invokes the privilege with reasonable cause. As this Court has since recognized, however, when a defendant has a clear entitlement to claim the privilege, forcing the defendant to take the stand is futile and thus unnecessary. United States v. Highgate, 521 F.3d 590, 594 (6th Cir.2008); Davis v. Straub, 430 F.3d 281, 288 n. 4 (6th Cir.2005); United States v. Medina, 992 F.2d 573, 586-87 (6th Cir.1993). In such a case, the reason behind the rule does not apply because the court already knows that reasonable cause to invoke the privilege exists. Such was the case here. When defense counsel sought to put Leroy Plummer on the stand to impeach the testimony of Kevin Foster-Bey, Plummer was charged with robbing a bank with Foster-Bey. In order to lay a foundation for his proposed testimony, Plummer would have to admit his association with Foster-Bey and that he had extensively discussed robbing banks with him. These admissions tend to incriminate Plummer, see Hoffman v. United States, 341 U.S. 479, 486, 71 S.Ct. 814, 95 L.Ed. 1118 (1951), and he thus had a valid Fifth Amendment privilege. And Plummer's lawyer made it clear that Plummer intended to invoke his privilege. Indeed, the reason the district court did not force Plummer to take the stand was because his privilege and his intent to invoke his privilege were so clear. Under these circumstances, it was not error for the district court to fail to force Plummer to take the stand. It would have been pointless to do so.