Concern over US effort to prosecute Sam Tunick, accused by authorities of wiping his phone using GrapheneOS
When he finally provided a passcode, “the screen went blank, flashed several times and the phone appeared to restart”, according to the motion.
He didn’t do that, the agent did. It’s not his fault the agent failed to follow evidence procedures and entered the self-destruct code.
So you can normally be held liable for telling the police bad information. For example, it’s a crime to lie to the feds. So if he told them the self destruct code, but told them it was the unlock code, maybe in normal circumstances there could be some liability.
But this case is interesting, because the phone code “testimony” was given under multiple severe Miranda violations. So that’s a whole 5th amendment clusterfuck. The normal remedy for a 5th violation is the statements are suppressed. But a whole separate criminal charge is not a “statement” to suppress, is it?
I guess on the other hand, if you properly suppress the fact that he told them the code in the first place, how do you prove he had any hand in “destroying” the property?
In the future, just tell them your code “includes” the numbers 1,2,3,4. Then after they destruct it tell them it was actually 4312 or whatever. Doesn’t even matter if it’s true since it’s reset.
Maybe he gave them the right code and the cop fat fingered in the wrong number.
