The JD case situation you reference happened in Civil Court and the situation as I understand it is that it is different from invoking the 5th in Criminal Court.
The Fifth Amendment does not provide a blanket right to refuse to answer questions [in civil court]. It is up to the judge to determine whether the privilege is properly invoked and that means that some investigative questioning must be allowed. So, what is going on now in the JD Main Civil Case is that the Judge has to intervene and determine whether “the witness has reasonable cause to apprehend danger of criminal liability,” and only then may the Fifth Amendment be invoked by the mistress as I understand it.
The mistress in the case invoked the 5th on all deposition questions (after previously agreeing to only invoke on a question by question basis) and it was this blanket invocation that I believe caused issues for the Plaintiff and why the Judge is now involved. The reason cited for the blanket invocation of the 5th by the Mistress was risk of incrimination in other criminal matters with no specifics given. So, now the Judge has to review all the deposition questions and make a determination as to which questions can be answered based on additional information from the Mistresses Atty and provided to the Judge (and not the Plaintiff to whom he submitted a [REDACTED] version of his document).
Perhaps
@gitana1 can assist on how invoking the 5th in Criminal Court might play out here as I thought that once a witness invokes the 5th on the stand in a Criminal Court that there is to be no further questioning and I also think there is a difference between Civil and Criminal courts in terms of adverse inference of the witness (yes to adverse inference in Civil Court/Family Court and no to advise inference in Criminal Court)?
MOO