Source: https://ediscovery.co/ediscoverydaily/electronic-discovery/in-decision-that-sounds-the-death-knell-for-fifth-amendment-protection-defendant-ordered-to-provide-cell-phone-password-ediscovery-case-law/
Timestamp: 2019-04-19 11:46:00+00:00

Document:
In Commonwealth v. Jones, SJC-12564 (Mass. Mar. 6, 2019), the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts reversed a lower court judge’s denial of the Commonwealth’s renewed Gelfgatt motion (where the act of entering the password would not amount to self-incrimination because the defendant’s knowledge of the password was already known to the Commonwealth, and was therefore a “foregone conclusion” under the Fifth Amendment and art. 12 of the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights), and the court remanded the case to the Superior Court for entry of an order compelling the defendant to enter the password into the cell phone at issue in the case.
In this case involving allegations that the defendant was trafficking a person for sexual servitude, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts seized a cell phone from the defendant that it believed contained material and inculpatory evidence, but was unable to access the phone’s contents because they were protected by a passcode. The Commonwealth sought to compel the defendant to decrypt the cell phone by filing a motion for an order requiring the defendant to produce a personal identification number access code in the Superior Court.
The central legal issue concerned whether compelling the defendant to enter the password to the cell phone would violate his privilege against self-incrimination guaranteed by both the Fifth Amendment and art. 12. The Commonwealth argued that under the decision in Commonwealth v. Gelfgatt, 468 Mass. 512, 11 N.E.3d 605 (2014), the act of entering the password would not amount to self-incrimination because the defendant’s knowledge of the password was already known to the Commonwealth, and was therefore a “foregone conclusion” under the Fifth Amendment and art. 12. Following a hearing, a judge denied the Commonwealth’s motion, concluding that the Commonwealth had not proved that the defendant’s knowledge of the password was a foregone conclusion under the Fifth Amendment.
What is the burden of proof that the Commonwealth bears on a motion like this in order to establish a “foregone conclusion,” as that term is used in Commonwealth v. Gelfgatt?
Did the Commonwealth meet its burden of proof in this case?
When a judge denies a ‘Gelfgatt’ motion filed by the Commonwealth and the Commonwealth thereafter renews its motion and provides additional supporting information that it had not provided in support of the motion initially, is a judge acting on the renewed motion first required to find that the additional information was not known or reasonably available to the Commonwealth when the earlier motion was filed before considering the additional information?
So, what do you think? Should defendants be ordered to provide their passcodes, even if it leads to incriminating evidence against them? Please let us know if any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

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