[quote="Algebra"][quote="zulaika"]wait a sec..isn't prostitution illegal?? how can a prostitute persue legal avenues when she's operating outside of its domain?? its like a drug dealer calling the cops because he was robbed of his drugs.
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I was thinking the same. How she can sue when her self broke the law? Or it was ligal to prostitute, I heard some places gave then a license to practice their career.[/quote]
I think she told a different story to the court and when the defense lawyers exposed her she then pleaded the fifth. Which is the refusal to testify on the ground that the testimony might tend to incriminate the witness in a crime, based on the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution which provides that "No person....shall be compelled to be a witness against himself,"
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More about the pleading the fifth
Pleading the fifth is the label commonly used in the US legal sphere to describe the act of invoking the right against self-incrimination. The fifth in this case, refers to the Fifth Amendment of the US Constitution which grants various rights to people including the right not to testify against oneself in a criminal trial. The Fifth Amendment does not grant the right not to testify because doing so would incriminate another person.
Defendants and other witnesses in a criminal, not civil, trial may plead the fifth when testifying under oath and in a court or other tribunal. This right is available to US citizens as well as some other categories of people depending on a variety of factors, including place of residence and connection to the US.
When a witness or defendant testifies under oath and doesn't want to answer a specific question because doing so might be incriminating, he or she might respond with "I plead the fifth" or "I take the fifth" or "I refuse to answer on the grounds that this may incriminate me." These are all ways a person might plead the fifth.
While refusing to answer questions can be a stumbling block for prosecutors, there are some methods for getting around witnesses who want to plead the fifth. One common approach is to offer the witness immunity. That is, prosecutors may promise not to prosecute a witness in exchange for their potentially incriminating testimony if it will help make the prosecution's case against the defendant. If the prosecutor isn't willing to grant immunity in exchange for the valuable testimony, either because the testimony isn't that damning or because the crime admitted to is too serious to not charge, a prosecutor may make a plea deal with the witness. In a plea deal, a prosecutor will promise to charge that witness on a lesser charge or recommend a lesser sentence in exchange for the testimony.
Regardless of the approach, if a prosecutor gets a witness on the stand, he or she must do so with the reasonable belief that the testimony being offered is true, otherwise the attorney can face charges, fines, and sanctions. These approaches for getting around a witness' right to plead the fifth are not always foolproof. Often, defense attorneys will use information about these deals to attack the credibility of the witness' testimony.
The legal phrase "to plead the fifth" has also entered common vernacular. In a casual setting, you may hear people say they plead the fifth when asked something because their answer might be incriminating or simply something they don't want to divulge
