Make Gay Man Testify At Partner's Trial Prosecutors Tell Judge

http://www.365gay.com/Newscon05/12/120605spouse.htm

Prosecutors are opposing efforts to apply the state's marital privilege law to same-sex couples, arguing that a man charged in a school embezzlement scandal can testify against his partner.

Stephen Signorelli, charged in the theft of $11.2 million from the wealthy Roslyn school district on Long Island, has asked a judge to prevent Frank Tassone, his longtime companion and the district's former superintendent, from testifying against him. (story)

The Nassau County district attorney's office argued in a response filed Monday that the request should be denied, since New York State does not recognize same-sex civil unions or gay marriages.

That argument "is not intended as a commentary on what the law ought to be, but rather what it is," the filing said.

1. he's a "hostile" witness
2. he can still plead the fifth
3. if they really did that, he WILL be incriminating himself

All of that aside, I think they should push the issue. The outcome won't be what they expect, and ultimately the fact that "forcing" him to testify was a meaningless exercise in anything but bigotry is something that can and should be held against that prosecutor.

see how the court could do anything other than side with the district attorney. Otherwise the exclusion would have to be extended to all unmarried couples. Even roommates could claim to be partners to avoid testifying, even if they weren't in a relationship.

you may be called as a witness but you don't have to say anything.

The difference is, you voted to put us in this box by keeping us from being married. We didn't vote for this. Somebody who has been together 10 or 11 years is probably more than roommates, even if they claim to be just roommates.

The so called "law" has a rude awakening coming on this one, no matter which way they go.

by doing so you incriminate YOURSELF. Spouses have been allowed not to testify, even if doing so would only incriminate their partners.

Of course anyone can always refuse to testify, if one is willing to face the consequences. Such personal "freedom" existed in Caesar's Rome, Hitler's Germany and Stalin's U.S.S.R.

himself.

So the argument still stands. A court can't punish him for making that statement based upon his judgement that he could in turn be found guilty of a crime.

I would dearly love for a court to try to get me to testify against someone I love and knew to be innocent but couldn't be married to. I'm perfectly willing to face the consequences and hand a few out myself.

I fucking double damn dare a DA to try it. Triple damn.

I no longer believe in justice or the legal system where it intersects gay rights, so I no longer believe in my duty to participate in it in a way that benefits the system of justice.

I suck at being a martyr - and I highly recommend anyone who wants to fight this absurdity adopt the same attitude. If you agree to be punished you will inevitably be punished, whether you deserve to be or not.

get those who falsely claim protection under the 5th.

For one thing, they can grant you immunity. Then if you fail to testify, they can throw the book at you for obstructing justice.

If you knew someone to be innocent, then there would be no reason for you to refuse to testify. Many spouses have testified FOR their partners.

If you knew your partner to be guilty would you testify against him? Under present laws, wives and husbands cannot be forced to testify against their spouses. But morally are they right to refuse to do so if they know he or she is guilty? :shrug:

The problem here has it roots in society's failure to recognize gay civil unions and its subsequent unequal treatment of gay couples. All couples should be treated the same.

Then the question would narrow down to whether or not either should be allowed to protect partners they know to be guilty.

I can't really imagine being in the position of having to testify against someone I love who I belatedly knew to be guilty EITHER WAY. It would indicate to me that there had been a level of dishonesty that I wouldn't tolerate, and couldn't support. There aren't enough heartbeats to waste on lost causes. Anything else would imply my criminal involvement, and that wouldn't happen so it's moot.

Certainly, I would be angry at having been fooled or inadvertantly involved (I certainly wouldn't be the kind to condone whatever the activity was), and even angrier at the disruption in my life caused by prosecutor and court and idiot SO. I believe in doing the right thing however, and if SO had to have been "caught" rather than volunteering a mistake and offering to make amends, I would have little problem doing "the right thing", particularly if it involved harm to someone else.

If I knew a loved one to be guilty of something that defrauded people of money or brought harm to someone or endangered someone, I would likely not do anything except volunteer the truth anyway if SO was intractable on first trying to correct the situation and make amends.

But if it was a test of wills between me and the DA over my right to choose not to testify, you can bet I would win, even if that meant doing everything possible to throw his (or her) case, and to hell with obstruction of justice. I keep my nose clean so that when it's time to be righteous I can pull out all the stops. If some cuckoo DA wanted to try to step all over me in a pissing contest, I would make sure it would be the end of that DA's career with a single minded ferocity that only a DA could appreciate.

BTW I mostly despise DA's, and that's putting it mildly. I can't think of any reason to ever be intimidated by a DA while living the life that I do. Maybe that's why I would relish a confrontation like that.

speeding, jaywalking or even if the two of you were driving home after dinner/drinks with friends and he got busted for DUI.

You'd have to testify how many drinks he consumed at friends, wife wouldn't.

I couldn't tell them because I was too busy having sex with minors shooting up heroin with a needle in my arm, a straw hanging out of my skull and couldn't rightly remember much after we got done pulling the legs off of live puppies and kittens.

He wasn't jaywalking. We both saw a pregnant nun on runaway rollerblades pushing a stroller about to be hit by a passing semi and put our lives at risk, at RISK I TELL YOU, to save that poor woman and her baby and her rollers and her stroller. My goodness. No good deed goes unpunished. But instead of helping the pregnant runaway rollerstroller nun, the poe-lice decided to abuse us poor helpless hoe-moes instead.

}(

Seriously though, I wouldn't "have to" testify anything and I'd inform them of my intent to be an uncooperative witness. They simply wouldn't use me precisely because I would do everything in my power to earn a mistrial or at least the appearance of harrassment from the DA.

Now, if I knew that he hadn't been drinking and they "busted him for DUI", that would be a horse of another color, but that would be voluntary. Seriously though, ultimately, if a judge said that I had to testify against my life partner just because he could make me or face going to jail myself, I would tell the judge precisely what level of contempt I held him and his court and the law in as a response to the subpoena and call the news stations when they issued the warrant.

Truthfully, DUI and jaywalking are earned and I can't defend them. Just one of those things. Drink like a pig, but don't drive drunk. If you're going to jaywalk and you get caught, don't fight the ticket. I would be equally guilty of letting SO drive drunk and putting someone else's life at risk with diminished judgement. I can't defend it.

Nevertheless, there is NOTHING a DA could do to me in any case that would do more than inconvenience me, and I'm always up for a bit of adventure, and entrapment. And grandstanding. I lack appropriate fear of assholes.

who don't have the cunning to loop-the-loop with DA's? Who get on the stand, tell the truth about their partners of 10 years ("Chester had 3 beers"), while - at the same time - people who have these shotgun weddings in Las Vegas may decline to testify against their husbands/wives of three days?

We have a civic duty ourselves to protest unjust laws, and to say we're doing it and we know we're breaking an unjust law, and why.

And like Rosa Parks, we may be arrested for claiming our equal rights without waiting on permission to do so, but it's something we have to do.

We have to be consciencious objectors when it is merited. Nobody is going to stand up for our civil rights but us. Nobody has our back but each of us for the other.

It's not so much about being smart, but about being true to your heart.

Plus, we've got each other for support - remember that. Long before you are required to testify you will be subpoena'd and will have a chance to make what you plan to do VERY public, and we will be right there supporting you and drawing attention to the fight and the issues.

so that even if a wife desperately wishes to testify against her husband she can't unless he waives the priviledge.

and sometimes people just wouldn't lie, because they don't lie about serious stuff. There are liars of all sexualities.

In other words, the fact that some people who are not in relationships would falsely claim that they WERE in relationships - and that they would falsely claim this in order to avoid being placed on the witness stand - is not (in any way) a legitimate reason for a court to say, "unmarried gay partners can't have the same protections that heterosexual married people do with regard to not testifying against their partners because some unmarried people lie about it." That's a total non-sequitur.

As a matter of fact, this is a big reason why gay marriage should be recognized.

...I might be forced to testify but my testimony would totally suck. I'd give a story about how I've been so emotionally harmed by the whole event, how the DA's harassment has forced me onto the stand, how it has put such a strain on my partner's and my relationship of 11 years... that my mind has just started to block things out.

DA: "Did Mr. Signorelli steal $11.2 million dollars from the Rosyln school district of Long Island?"

Me: "I don't remember. It's all fuzzy."

:P

Or worse... I could pull a Clinton.

DA: "Did Mr. Signorelli steal $11.2 million dollars from the Rosyln school district of Long Island?"

Me: "Define stealing."