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On Monday, a US federal appeals court sided against a former Philadelphia police officer who has been in jail 17 months because he invoked his Fifth Amendment right against compelled self-incrimination. He had refused to comply with a court order commanding him to unlock two hard drives the authorities say contain child porn.
The 3-0 decision (PDF) by the 3rd US Circuit Court of Appeals means that the suspect, Francis Rawls, likely will remain jailed indefinitely or until the order (PDF) finding him in contempt of court is lifted or overturned. However, he still can comply with the order and unlock two FileVault encrypted drives connected to his Apple Mac Pro. Using a warrant, authorities seized those drives from his residence in 2015. While Rawls could get out from under the contempt order by unlocking those drives, doing so might expose him to other legal troubles.
In deciding against Rawls, the court of appeals found that the constitutional rights against being compelled to testify against oneself were not being breached. That's because the appeals court, like the police, agreed that the presence of child porn on his drives was a "foregone conclusion." The Fifth Amendment, at its most basic level, protects suspects from being forced to disclose incriminating evidence. In this instance, however, the authorities said they already know there's child porn on the drives, so Rawls' constitutional rights aren't compromised.
[...] The suspect's attorney, Federal Public Defender Keith Donoghue, was disappointed by the ruling.
"The fact remains that the government has not brought charges," Donoghue said in a telephone interview. "Our client has now been in custody for almost 18 months based on his assertion of his Fifth Amendment right against compelled self-incrimination."
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 22 2017, @01:00PM (2 children)
The coverage and responses this case is getting indicate quite a few people do care, even when the miscarriage of justice is being levied against some of the least desirable of society.
I think the problem is not that people don't care, but they rightfully feel like they cannot do anything. Think about the fact that of our last 5 presidents, we came within a hair's breadth of being able to say 4 were related by blood or marriage. Instead 'only' 2 were. For such an important position at the highest level to come down to, in large, cronyism and nepotism is just so inconceivably broken. And the whole system seems to attract the worst of the worst. I don't like to just whine so I would say that proportional representation would be a huge step forward towards fixing this. Unfortunately going that direction would require the very establishment that it would undermine to pass - as would most of any change. This is why getting people into office who are not a part of the political establishment, even if we might otherwise detest their views, is so crucially important.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 22 2017, @02:44PM (1 child)
Miscarriages of justice will always be a problem. The big problems here tend to be that they disproportionately affect the poor and powerless in a negative way and the rich and powerful in a positive way. That combined with how the system handles cases that pop up. In most cases, the prosecution will fight tooth and nail well past the point where there's any legitimate question about the verdict being just and appropriate.
Properly funding the public defenders office and ensuring that everybody has the right to a competent attorney's representation would go a long way towards fixing the system.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday March 22 2017, @05:41PM
They really don't want to let the malformed case be aborted, so someone's suffering until there's a miscarriage.
There is little doubt that someone did sin, but since they can't prove it, they should entrust the final judgement to $deity.