Fifth Amendment question

I am guessing here, but it may have to do with the following provision from the Fifth Amendment:

"...nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself...."

The information in a deposition may be self-incriminating?

I was wondering more specifically what they meant by discovery. That seems to be the anti-fifth theme here. Any insight there?

"Discovery" in my jurisdiction usualy relates to civil matters where both sides are required to exchange information with each other. It's about expediting the case. In a criminal sense it weighs more in favour of the defense as the prosecution has to reveal its case but the defence can hold back from presenting anything before the trial or hearing.

In this sense then "discovery" means finding out what the other side has.

Re: Fifth Amendment question


Here is my take on this:

Let me define discovery by this general definition. Discovery is where both the Prosecution and the Defense basically lay their cards out on the table. Both sides show what all evidence and whatnot that they have in their bag. In your quote that states "I'll give defendants more discovery when they give me a deposition.": basically the prosecution is saying that they will hold some of those cards, and surpise the defendant in trial with that. You can say that the evidence is something that you just learned about or other shady methods of introducing "unforeseen" elements in a trial. They are doing this because of the lack of a good deposition, which a deposition is a pre-trial way of asking questioning a witness/defendant before the trial. This gives the person rope to hang themselves because you can then be impeached if your responses vary to the questions when given during trial. However your fifth amendment rights help you avoid answering questions in certain circumstances, which in this case leads the proscecution to withold certain elements when they lay all their cards out on the table during discovery.

I hope this helps. If you want to PM me feel free to do so.

Matthew