A trial judge did not err by barring the statements of a child pornography suspect who vacillated about whether to talk to FBI agents but declined to sign a waiver-of-rights form, a federal appeals court has ruled.
A divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit concluded that even though Gordon L. Plugh of Rochester expressed uncertainty about whether to invoke his Fifth Amendment rights, his final refusal to sign the form was an “unequivocally negative” answer to the question of whether he wished to waive them.
