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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, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 22 2017, @02:31PM (1 child)
You seem pretty sure of your position, there.
Hypothetically speaking, then... when they do get in to those drives, and find every one of those thousands of images they 'know' he has, are cartoons? When every single instance of CP in his possession is an entirely animated, and at no point in his entire CP-consuming career has an actual human being been involved in the production of the content, other than as the artist wielding the pen/pencil? If he went out of his way to keep it that way, doing his best to make sure that he was not contributing to the exploitation of children?
Assume the existence of an otherwise healthy adult, an upstanding citizen (a police officer, perhaps even of good standing, good at his job), who has recognized he has a deviancy and a problem. He can't effectively treat it through the proper channels (psychologists / medical system) due to the very intense social stigma surrounding the entire issue, for fear word would somehow get out and the hand of the entire world would be raised against him, without even knowing any details of the situation (Exhibit A: You). What does such a person do? If they, being a responsible adult and capable of a reasonable self-control, decide to deal with it privately, ensuring to the best of their ability that no actual person is being harmed, no money is going towards supporting the evils of child exploitation, is that really so bad?
Apparently it is. Someone happens to get a glance at (the absence of) an animated titty, and word does get out. And then it's straight to a living hell, fueled by the bullshit that is the modern media.
I do not have any details of this particular case. Perhaps this man is not the man I described. In fact, he probably isn't. Almost certainly isn't. But the fact that I can come up with a scenario such as the above, in only a few minutes of thinking about it, makes it not-impossible that such a person exists, somewhere. "Innocent until proven guilty" should not, and does not, disappear as soon as underage porn becomes involved, despite the best efforts of the politicians and the media to make you believe otherwise. If you want to help the world be a better place? When you hear shit like this come on the news, turn the damn TV off. It's not really relevant anyway.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 23 2017, @10:57AM
The crux of the matter is to suppress men's desire for child brides and to uphold Jesus' will that women be the ruler and the man the servant. The cop will be punished either way.
Why do you think all the wedding parties are bombed?
The families are marrying their female children to men.
Thus the Jesus' pro-woman society feels the man and the family must die and the bride is better of dead than raped and ruled over by a mmmmaaaallleee.
Jesus worshipers hate men and hate the God of the Armies: the Eternal one. They pine for Jesus' heavenly father and oppose the father of the Jews whom Jesus called the adversary.