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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: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 22 2017, @11:24AM (1 child)
Well, if you are quoting the bible, you should note that the bible also forbids anyone to make images. Even if it is interpreted as only forbidding images of god, then it still says god made man in his image, and therefore it is to conclude that any image of a human is also indirectly an image of god, and therefore forbidden by the bible. Since child porn is by definition the image of a human (indeed, one maximizing what it shows of that human), you still have to conclude that child porn violates god's law.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 23 2017, @10:48AM
The people persecuting men for viewing child porn are persecuting the men because the existence of the child porn proves that the man is attracted to (usually female) children rather than adult women.
A pillar of control over females by men is to marry them off "good and young".
White, Proud, Christian men follow the will of Jesus closely; he protected and elevated women while smashing men into the dirt. Where God (of the Armies, the Eternal one) raised man up as overlord of the female, and unpunished rapists of the girl child: a true ruler.... Jesus rejected the Law of the Eternal One and debased man into a protector of the woman, her foot solider, and a slave who may not even look at a woman, while allowing the woman to have sex with as many men as she wished without punishment.
The people persecuting men for child porn are not executing God's law, they are executing Jesus' law and the religion of women. The main crux of the persecution is to rid the society of even a hint of man-girl pedophillia as even if all other laws stood: if men could have female children as brides: men would rule over women from that day forward. Animals rarely turn on those whom they knew since childhood, while only Dogs are loyal even if adopted as an adult.