Convicted of a crime is different than suspicion of a crime.

Do you think it's reasonable to imprison someone for life if they don't tell you where they hid your car?

And holding a person is already a separate charge - kidnapping and unlawful imprisonment.

Or worse, they really didn't steal it and the court doesn't believe them.

An actual sentence eventually has an end.

You can be charged with both. I hope you never have to deal with someone who flaunts the courts in your face. You'll be glad the system works the way it does, if anyone bothers to enforce the law.

So do you think it's reasonable that contempt of court can carry a life sentence without even being convicted by a jury of your peers? Is contempt of court a worse crime than assault or manslaughter?

You have the right to not divulge information from your mind that would incriminate yourself. In the US this is called the 5th amendment.

There's no jury because it's regarding acts that occurred in court, so it's simply not meaningful to have a jury decide the facts of the case when they happened right in front of the judge, who does not need anyone to figure out the veracity of what they just personally witnessed.

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.

Before you're given contempt for not divulging information you are given immunity from criminal charges as a result of that testimony.

Source? That is certainly not true in general.

As GP said, that's not true in general. Immunity is offered when the prosecution believes your testimony will result in further arrests or in prevention of future crimes. That circumstance is exceedingly rare outside of episodes of "24".

They can't be charged with contempt over that. Compelling them to do so is forcing them to self-incriminate themselves.

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?

Is it more reasonable to get a life sentence because someone thinks you know something you don't?