What befuddles my non-lawyer mind is that why such evidence is needed in the first place. If it's established firmly that someone has piles of illegal files, then for the sake of their incrimination, why do the files need to be produced at all?
If on the other hand, the files are being requisitioned for purposes unrelated to the the defendant's current outstanding culpability, then what laws does that kind of thing fall under?
IANAL, but from reading about this case (and opinions from actual lawyers), I believe it's because they actually don't have the evidence to convict (or they believe the evidence they have, absent the files on the encrypted drive, are not enough, or at least not enough for the sentence they want). They know the evidence on the drive exists, but cannot get up in front of a judge and jury and say "because we found these hashes in the logs, we know there are these files on the drive". They have to actually produce the files themselves.
So, you might say, ok, then that means asking Rawls to unlock the drives is asking him to incriminate himself, and that's not cool. But still, go back to the "foregone conclusion" bit: this isn't a fishing expedition to see if they can find evidence of wrongdoing. They're not asking him, "Hey, do you have any child porn on your hard drives? If so, give them to us." If that were what they're doing, Rawls would be perfectly in the right to say, "I do not have any files to give you". They know, based on the log files, that the incriminating files are on the drive. They are merely requiring Rawls to produce evidence that they know exists, and his refusal to do so is unlawful. Just as if someone refused to turn over bank records that the authorities knew existed.
I know I'm not explaining this perfectly (IANAL, as I said), but hopefully this helps?
I'm not so confused about the legality here as much as I don't understand why they need the files at all if they have irrefutable evidence that he has them.
If I have sales receipts and camera footage showing you purchased 100 Led Zeppelin CDs, do I need to see the CDs in person before I know you have good taste in music?
I'm guessing this has something to do with the subtleties of admissible evidence versus 4th amendment stuff.
If you refuse to hand over subpoenaed evidence you can be held in contempt of court which usually results in some sort of fine, but could potentially result in jail time. Note that this all occurs before your conviction, so time spent in jail for contempt does not count towards your eventual sentence.
Yes, but why are the files needed if it is know which files the drive contains based on hashes, as thousands of hashes matching known images should be plenty to convict on ?
Maybe the hashes can only tell that some drive contains the images, and the prosecutor believes it is this particular drive, and tries to avoid having to deal with that defense ?
If there is evidence that the particular drive contains those images, why bother with the drive at all ? This is the part that doesn't make sense to me.
Because without the images, you have to lead a jury through the fundamentals necessary to make them believe, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the presence of certain strings of hexadecimal digits in a log file is conclusive evidence in its own right. Because failure to do so means that the defendant walks free. Because as long as he's in contempt, he's behind bars indefinitely, so why attach a specific term to his incarceration unnecessarily?
What befuddles my non-lawyer mind is that why such evidence is needed in the first place. If it's established firmly that someone has piles of illegal files, then for the sake of their incrimination, why do the files need to be produced at all?
If on the other hand, the files are being requisitioned for purposes unrelated to the the defendant's current outstanding culpability, then what laws does that kind of thing fall under?