[Johnny555]

So would it make sense for a reasonable person to forget a password they typed in only yesterday

Judging by our password reset request tickets, I can say "yes"

I've even forgotten a password just minutes after typing it. And I can't even tell you my desktop password despite typing it a dozen times a day for nearly 6 months. I once tried to give my wife the password over the phone and I couldn't do it without a keyboard to silently type on.

[pas]

I think all of these are taken into account. The defendant is usually given opportunity to just type the password to decrypt the drive.

Usually only passwords are assumed to be remembered that are used many times with no sign of changing it.

Still, the defendant can claim that the whole ordeal of arrest and trial took a serious toll on his/her memory. Of course the judge might or might not believe it.

[Johnny555]

I don't think you've ever worked at a corporate help desk -- people do forget passwords, even ones they've used for months - they'll swear up and down that the AD server is wrong.

I once helped a professor decrypt a zip file by brute forcing the password (it was only 6 characters long). He swore it was his wife's name and that the file must be corrupt because he surely knows how to type her name. Turned out that it was a misspelling of her name, and he said "Oh right, I misspelled it to make it harder to guess".

[pas]

I did, I forgot passwords that were long and complex too. I forgot new passwords regularly after thinking okay, now I got it.

I'm just claiming that this is how courts operate, not that it's the best thing ever and that it's infallible.