An earlier post discussed the laws
some states have against secretly recording one's own conversations, and, in particular,
the case of Linda Tripp, prosecuted for the trouble she caused Clinton, and Mr. Hyde of
Massachusetts, prosecuted for taping police misconduct. Joseph Ditkoff, an old Yale
friend, writes:
...
[On the Hyde case in Massachusetts]... it appears that he was intentionally trying
to goad the police into doing something that would play well for the tape recorder...
Interestingly, it is not illegal in Massachusetts to videotape secretly, if there is
no audio component.
The Linda Tripp prosecution collapsed because of immunity issues. Tripp had received
immunity from the federal court (District of D.C.) for her grand jury testimony and for
the production of her tapes. She was protected both from the use of the tapes and
derivative use. The problem was that one derivative use was the fact that every witness
against her had read her grand jury testimony and was influenced by it. Because the
prosecutor could not prove that his evidence did not derive from the immunized
testimony, he was out of luck. Of course, this would have been different if Congress had
not published the grand jury testimony.
Both Maryland and Massachusetts have been controlled by the Democrats for years and
years. Which party was it that pundits worry will subvert our civil liberties? I
wonder if Hawaii, Rhode Island, and the District of Columbia also try to throw people
in jail for exposing the misbehavior of public officials.
[ permalink, http://php.indiana.edu/~erasmuse/w/03.09.18a.htm ]
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