Federal prosecutors wrote to a US judge Wednesday saying that a child-porn suspect jailed for nearly two years for refusing to decrypt his hard drives should remain jailed until he complies with a court order to unlock them. The defendant has a lot of "chutzpah" to even ask to get out of jail while he appeals the contempt-of-court order to the US Supreme Court, prosecutors said in a new court filing.

The dispute concerns a now-fired Philadelphia cop who has been jailed since September 30, 2015 for refusing to decrypt two hard drives that authorities found at his residence as part of a federal child-porn investigation. Lawyers for Francis Rawls want him released pending an appeal to the Supreme Court, which has never decided on whether forcing somebody to decrypt hardware amounts to a Fifth Amendment violation.

"He does not offer to comply with the original order, nor does he assert that it is impossible for him to do so. Nevertheless, he asks the Court to allow him to go free. The Court should deny the motions," federal prosecutor Michael Levy wrote (PDF) the federal judge who will preside over a hearing on the dispute Thursday.

In a footnote after the word "free" in the above quotation from the government's legal brief, assistant US attorney Michael Levy writes:

The Yiddish word "chutzpah," which Leo Rosten defined in The Joys of Yiddish (1968 Washington Square Press) as "gall, brazen nerve, effrontery, incredible 'guts', presumption plus arrogance such as no other word and no other language can do justice to," certainly fits this case. Rosten gave as an example, “that quality enshrined in a man who, having killed his mother and father, throws himself on the mercy of the court because he is an orphan.” See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chutzpah, last checked on August 29, 2017.

Levy goes on to dispute defense attorney Keith Donoghue's assertion that 18 months is the maximum amount Rawls can be confined. He said there was "no temporal limitation on the amount of time" somebody can be confined for civil contempt."

Every court to hear Rawls' challenge has set aside his contention that forcing him to decrypt the drives amounts to compelled self-incrimination in violation of the Fifth Amendment.

A hearing on the matter is set for Thursday in a Pennsylvania federal court.

Here is a link to our Tuesday story describing the ongoing dispute in more detail.