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Police can’t demand you reveal your phone passcode then tell a jury you refused

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Re: Police can’t demand you reveal your phone passcode then tell a jury you refused

#421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chicago is bad. I've suffered bad abuse in Chicagoland by the police. I just did 8 years in the county jail due to the police violating the law and violating my rights.

Don’t you mean 8 months? In Illinois you can only be sentenced to less than a year in county jail unless you are awaiting trial in which case 8 years seems a bit much.

No, I mean 8 years. Over 8 years. I'm still in custody now.

There are others in the jail for almost 12 years.. here are the stats: https://www.cookcountysheriff.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/09...

Re: Police can’t demand you reveal your phone passcode then tell a jury you refused

#422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where I live you can only appeal once you're found guilty at a trial. The case is over 8 years old now and I still haven't had trial. I would hope the appeal court would reverse, but I've had about a dozen cases wrongly denied by the appellate courts recently. The appellate courts are pretty much as biased as the trial courts, especially at the state level. The federal courts are a little bit smarter. I've tried talk…

Wait, you are part to or accused in about 12 cases?!

No, only two criminal cases. The other 12 cases were civil involving detainee rights.

Re: Police can’t demand you reveal your phone passcode then tell a jury you refused

#423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Statute of limitations only applies to charging someone, not after they've been charged. Speedy trial doesn't apply in almost any situation you can think of. It's almost impossible to beat a case on speedy trial grounds. All my speedy trial motions have been denied so far, most recently because of COVID. I'm still working this angle though.

I wasn't sure if they formally charged you. My state says they have 5 years to complete the trial (or maybe initiate after charging). Good luck!

Thank you!

Re: Police can’t demand you reveal your phone passcode then tell a jury you refused

#424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the police are aware of this “feature”, that’s an easy contempt and destruction of evidence charge among others. I’d recommend just not doing it.

Unlikely, in my courtroom experience. I would highly recommend making sure the police can't get to your data. It is unlikely you will be charged with anything. And what you get charged with if they get to your data might be 1000X worse than any minor obstruction of justice charge, depending on what sort of crime you are committing.

What crime were you charged with?

Re: Police can’t demand you reveal your phone passcode then tell a jury you refused

#425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The trooper lied to "the court", twice. It was a bench trial. Both lies took place in front of the magistrate with no jury present. I have documentation that shows the statement were factually incorrect and that for one of those statements he said the opposite a few minutes beforehand and the evidence supports the out-of-court statement.

Well, the downside of calling them judges is that sometimes they make a call we don't agree with. Maybe legitimately, maybe not. But it isn't necessarily evidence of a systemic problem, even if it is entirely unjust for you.

What does that have to do with a cop lying in court and continuing to be a cop after that? Judges won't be able to make just decisions if lying cops are allowed to continue to be cops. Allowing garbage-in-garbage-out seems like a systemic issue to me.

Judges generally aren't involved I'm the removal of an officer. That typically happens via IAD, and even then the union tells them to resign so the IAD investigation ends and they can just go to a different department.

Re: Police can’t demand you reveal your phone passcode then tell a jury you refused

#426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What profession has an effective method of weeding out abusive people?

This is 100% a bad faith question. And even if it's being asked in good faith, it's entirely irrelevant. It's essentially whataboutism. But I'll address it anyways. If I have an abusive co-worker in my tech job and my manager and HR refuse to do anything about it, it just makes work suck. But an abusive cop ruins lives with bullshit charges and bullshit handling of innocent people. In worst-case scenarios, they're mu…

It's not in bad faith, but it is rhetorical: people protecting their own, at an industry or occupational level, is the rule, not the exception.

Re: Police can’t demand you reveal your phone passcode then tell a jury you refused

#427

Lots of posts on here about US folks taking bizarre measures to avoid being harassed by authority: travel with burner phones, not using unusual OSes, not using techniques to record, wiping phones before travel. We're just normalizing a slow roll to a police-state.

No, we have Qualified Immunity. The cops can do whatever the fuck they want and then lie about it without any repercussions whatsoever. Even in a case where it can be proven that a cop lied on the stand the court will side with the cops and there is no perjury for cops due to qualified immunity.

If we can ever hold police to the same standards as every other citizen then we won't need to try to evade police detection. Pretty sad that police are so dishonest on a regular basis.

The police in the US are really government sanctioned gangs of thugs.

Next time you see a politician get up and talk about being 'tough on crime' you'll know how things got this way.

Re: Police can’t demand you reveal your phone passcode then tell a jury you refused

#428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you talking about a judge, or a jury? An officer of the court is compelled to tell the truth, under oath or not. A jury is not required to give an officer of the court any more weight than they give to anyone else.

The trooper lied to "the court", twice. It was a bench trial. Both lies took place in front of the magistrate with no jury present. I have documentation that shows the statement were factually incorrect and that for one of those statements he said the opposite a few minutes beforehand and the evidence supports the out-of-court statement.

Following this conversation, it reminds me of the film 'The Chicago Seven' regarding the problems within the court, and the judge's inherent bias for the officers.

Re: Police can’t demand you reveal your phone passcode then tell a jury you refused

#429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is my fault for not checking before I typed. It is AES with a 256-bit key. It was Microsoft Bitlocker.

Isn't the key issue what your password was, though? If your password was "123", then they probably could have cracked it regardless of how strong the encryption was.

The password was secure. The prosecutor did have a forensic guy come in who was very honest and talked about the techniques he uses at the FBI for cracking passwords, e.g. dictionary attacks. The problem was that the police were also allowed to testify and their non-expert testimony was allowed in the trial court even though they are not experts in the subject.

Re: Police can’t demand you reveal your phone passcode then tell a jury you refused

#430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is also that the UK doesn't have a Fifth Amendment, and their right to remain silent is subtly but importantly different.

Indeed, in England and Wales: "You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court . Anything you do say may be given in evidence." In Scotland it's different: "You are not obliged to say anything but anything you do say will be noted down and may be used in evidence. Do you understand?"[1] [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ri…

The English right is much misunderstood.

What it is referring to is a situation where you rely on some evidence that you could have fabricated, the prosecution is entitled to point out that you had the opportunity to fabricate it.

For example, you claim you were at your friend's house at the time of the crime, but you didn't mention this to the police at the time of the arrest so that they can go and interview your friend to corroborate your alibi.

A jury may take from this that your alibi is not very convincing, because you may have arranged this alibi with your friend between arrest and trial.

In neither England nor the US can someone be convicted based on silence alone. Silence isn't evidence. It is simply the lack of evidence.

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