The "contempt of court" charge basically serves as a court-private time-out box to send people to whenever they can't handle being in court, until they learn to stop, erm, "blocking the cooperative event queue from pumping messages."
It's not that the charge has to be indefinite—but it has to be capable of sticking as long as the trial's progress is halted. The charge should definitely cease to apply if the trial manages to resume through some other route—and especially if it manages to conclude.
Remember, "contempt of court" isn't about malfeasance, either. Experts who lie on the stand are not in contempt. Lawyers who introduce non-cross-examined evidence are not in contempt. Random audience members getting up and saying things during court are not in contempt. It's only when one of these things causes the trial mechanism to grind to a halt, and then the person refuses to yield to let the trial resume, that they are in contempt. It's a process-control mechanism, and in that respect, it's quite necessary.
(That's not to say it can't be abused—especially in smaller courts in non-jury trials. But it has a well-defined good usage, and can't really be redefined without losing that usage.)
The rights of protest and speech cannot be the same in courts, even to the same degree as a place like congress or the offices of the executive. (And in those last two cases, the right of speech is also curtailed.) Otherwise, the courts wouldn't be able to function, particularly in the case of an adversarial court system.
As an analogy, years ago I was part of a small alliance in Eve that consistently won battles. But as we were winning, the server would crash and the devs would come in and roll-back the damage we had done.
The courts have a hard enough time as it is functioning. I am involved in a case against an assailant, and I learned that it's very typical for defense attorneys to purposely drag out cases to maximize victim fatigue. The defense attorney somehow has surgery scheduled on the hearing dates. A legal system is very complicated. It's likely to have more loopholes than a software system has bugs. And it's probably a lot harder and more time consuming to fix those.
This is why "contempt of court" exists.
Why would there need to be any place for unfairness to reside in a system?
Can a court hold the jury in contempt for having the wrong verdict? They used to be able to.
You know how you can "sudo" and type your password (if you have an account with sudo privileges) and then for a few minutes afterward you don't have to type your password when you use sudo?
Think of Touch ID like that: the passcode is still the thing that unlocks the phone, but once it's been entered you can use Touch ID for a little while, in much the same way that sudo can remember you've recently proved yourself to it. After 48 hours, after a certain number of failed Touch ID attempts, or after any restart of the phone, though, Touch ID stops being available and the phone goes back to only being unlockable via the passcode (Touch ID will only become available after the next time the passcode is entered).
from what I read, the device has to be left in a locked state for 48h.
Say she waits two days. The phone won't be unlocked with a fingerprint now; it requires a passcode, and the court can't compel someone to provide a passcode in the same way that it can compel them to provide fingerprints.
Contempt wouldn't be a valid charge anymore, at that point. If the judge won't recognize that, the prisoner/suspect could appeal.
The above is my understanding of the theory of how it works. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe it works differently in practice.
It sounds to me like fingerprint authentication is not something a criminal should use if they don't want to get caught. Apparently a passcode is protected under the Fifth Amendment but not a fingerprint. [1]
But it's ridiculous really. All that a criminal needs to do is restart their phone to prevent their fingerprint from being used. And there are good reasons for doing so other than to escape incrimination! And that can be done from the lock screen... Imagine the criminal held down the power off button for three seconds then swiped, is that a crime? Perhaps that falls under spoliation of evidence, but then again how is not giving a passcode not considered spoliation?
Apple should require a user configurable timeout for requiring of a passcode. I'm sure it normally takes more than two hours to interview and charge someone.
1. http://www.macrumors.com/2014/10/31/fingerprints-not-protect...
A contempt charge wouldn't hold any more (probably), but there's probably another charge that would apply, like spoliation of evidence [sorry, realized that you mentioned that charge further down in your comment].
> It sounds to me like fingerprint authentication is not something a criminal should use if they don't want to get caught.
True.
> Imagine the criminal held down the power off button for three seconds then swiped, is that a crime?
It's also not normally a crime for her to mutilate her thumb or for me to wave a knife around if I believe I'm alone and don't intend to harm anyone. Motive and context matter.
> but then again how is not giving a passcode not considered spoliation?
The act of making the fingerprint unusable would be the spoliation, I suppose. Not giving the passcode would be protected under the 5th.
Sounds like intent to harm oneself, which gets one locked up in the loony bin until one demonstrates oneself to be of sound mind.
I thought being compelled to reveal a passphrase was no longer required.
Moreover, what exactly would she be tried for? Do we need a trial to establish that she has in fact continued to disobey the judge's order to unlock the phone?
The courts really don't get to hold someone indefinitely without charging them with something.
Contempt is generally used as a quick and dirty hack for someone disobeying the procedures of the court. Not providing a fingerprint to unlock evidence is WAY beyond that scope and probably should require a hearing and trial.
Now, she could be detained while that hearing is proceeding, but that's different that just being jailed for contempt.
Compelling someone to open a phone with a fingerprint is far from settled law. It should be litigated properly as part of the trial rather than with a "contempt" charge.
In this instance, it is the court that is attempting to end run an unsettled area of the law using "contempt".
A charge of contempt is still a charge.
And holding a person is already a separate charge - kidnapping and unlawful imprisonment.
An actual sentence eventually has an end.
You have the right to not divulge information from your mind that would incriminate yourself. In the US this is called the 5th amendment.
The alternative is that people have a right to stop the courts from functioning. Our interests in not having courts that can be easily thwarted probably does outweigh our interests in any single conviction.
It's only forever if you refuse to comply for that long. It is coercive. The justice system does not, because it cannot, ask you to comply. It forces you to comply and it does not take no for an answer or it would not function.
Self incrimination protections are there for a good reason. If the person is on trial, then they haven't pleaded guilty - they say they haven't done what they are accused of. If they are in fact innocent, if the court decided to enforce them into provide this information and jailed them for contempt, it would literally be indefinite because they are innocent and cannot provide information on what they don't know!
I guess that's why a key or fingerprint is allowed - it is definitely something that can be used one way or the other. If they key doesn't work, it doesn't work. Same with a fingerprint.
But a passcode - it is not definitive. The defendant may say they don't know it as someone changed it on them. They then type in a wrong code: how are you going to disprove that?
In any case, if the fingerprint isn't the same "testimony" as a passphrase, the suspect is not in violation of the law after 48 hours has elapsed, since "uttering their fingerprint" (as I'm choosing to style it) after 48 hours wouldn't unlock the phone any more anyway.
So, you can be compelled to provide a fingerprint, and the use that the fingerprint is put to is outside the scope of 5th amendment protections.
Further, the Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas (with Scalia joining) said that the 5th amendment applies to, "compelled production not just of incriminating testimony, but of any incriminating evidence." https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/99-166.ZC.html
The courts' definition of "witness" is what's relevant in addition to "testimony". Is your smartphone a privileged "witness"? I would think that to be the ultimate decision that needs to be made by the Supreme Court, and one that may in fact hinge on what person is next appointed to the Supreme Court.
Even if you /know/ you don't have anything illegal on any of my encrypted devices, it's better to take a contempt of court charge than give up a password...because of what they might /find/ or possible things unrelated to an investigation that they can link to a crime (or what they can then plant).