It would depend on precisely what the ask was. Did the officer ask, "Give me the pin to unlock the phone."? In that case the command was complied with.
Even if the prompt was vague like "what's the pin for the phone", you'd be hard pressed to convince a judge that a duress pin (to wipe the phone) is a reasonable person[1] interpretation.
The claim was that giving the delete PIN constitutes lying or making a false statement. If someone complied with what was asked, they would not be guilty of lying, even if a reasonable person would judge that the action did not meet the intent of the ask. And it doesn't appear that they are charging him with making a false statement.
The fact that the feds are using an obscure law to argue that he destroyed property to prevent it from being seized shows that they're reaching here.
> If someone complied with what was asked, they would not be guilty of lying, even if a reasonable person would judge that the action did not meet the intent of the ask.
This doesn't pass the sniff test. Consider the following:
Cops: "where were you on the night of the murder?"
Suspect: "at work"
Cops: "You're lying, we found surveillance footage of you near your girlfriend's apartment"
Suspect: "ah-ha, what I actually meant by 'at work', was that I was mentally at work!"
Of course, there's some grey area where the suspect gives cagey or vague answers, but in this case by giving a duress pin, it's pretty obvious the intention was to deceive the CBP officer.
Not really, no. I think it would be extremely hard to convince any jury that you really believed that a PIN that wipes the phone was what the officer was asking for.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_person