[gruez]

The point isn't that giving a duress pin is the same as physical assault, or that the duress pin feature is a "booby trap". It's that for the purposes of ascertaining guilt, you don't get a pass just because you're not the person that physically initiated the action.

[mpdpsycho]

Easily illustrated with the comparison to burning a piece of paper with evidence in front of an officer trying to obtain it. Though even though the “guilt” there is the burner’s, that there is any guilt to assign at all depends on whether the law had jurisdiction to that paper in that situation.

[gruez]

Knowingly obstructing investigations is illegal even if there isn't an active search warrant

>During the fall of Enron, Arthur Andersen, Enron's accounting firm, instructed its employees to destroy documents relating to Enron after Andersen officials learned they would soon be investigated by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Andersen_LLP_v._United_...

The conviction was overturned, but only on procedural grounds

[mpdpsycho]

Mmm, having an example here is good. I was thinking about how in larger cases like this it would be almost certainly always agreeable that the party disposing of evidence is at least somewhat aware of their guilt and that the act is obstruction regardless of warrant.

But, let’s say somebody unknowingly has evidence to a case, then in the time it takes for law enforcement to retrieve it, accidentally or otherwise destroys it, but necessarily not knowing that it was any sort of evidence. Would a case hold up in that situation if law decides to pin it on the person in question? Personally, I think situationally, it should not, but I don’t know how much faith I have that that would be the case.

Anyways, pertaining to the topic - in the same spirit of case-by-case, I’m not surprised by the outcome even if I’m glad the functionality worked here.

[phoghed]

Then construct a better analogy, or better yet don’t rely on one at all