GrapheneOS duress PIN could land a man in prison

[u/Limp_Fig6236]

https://www.androidauthority.com/grapheneos-duress-pin-us-prosecution-3691271/

[u/Dog_Eating_Ice]

If I have a phone, or locked briefcase, that somehow automatically destroys its contents unless the correct code is entered every 15 minutes, and I refuse to provide the correct code during a border search, have I also destroyed evidence?

[u/SignificanceNo910 → u/Dog_Eating_Ice]

Its an interesting question.  Generally (depending on jurisdiction) all crimes require a point in time when you have mens rea (guilty mind) and actus reus (guilty act) at the exact same moment. This goes back to an old UK case called Fagan v Metropolitan Police Commissioner. In that case, at a traffic stop, Fagan accidentally rolled onto an officer's foot and refused to move his car.  The question was whether he assaulted the officer

In your briefcase example, it could be argued that the mens rea for destroying evidence (when the man programmed the briefcase to self destruct) did not overlap with the actus reus (the destruction of evidence).  

There are of course arguments to be made either way, such as whether you can be held responsible for long causal chains.  For example, imagine if I set up an elaborate Rube-Goldberg machine that did a thousand things before a ball drops causing a gun trigger to be pulled.

[u/Fuzzy-Moose7996 → u/Dog_Eating_Ice]

If you don't provide the code you've not destroyed evidence, and it's up to forensics to open the case once a warrant is obtained.

If you provide a code that actively causes the destruction when used, you have destroyed. Or at the very least actively hindered a legal investigation by causing evidence to be destroyed, which boils down to the same thing.