No. of Recommendations: 4
How do you prove you destroyed something, years ago? How do you prove you did not know the Gestapo might come looking for it, when you destroyed it? You can't prove you destroyed it 15 years ago, instead of hours before the Gestapo knock on the door. Remember how Bush 43 trapped Saddam by demanding he prove a negative?
Fortunately, you don't have to. That's the importance of the presumption of innocence. The government has to affirmatively prove their case; you don't have to prove the negative. This is a specific intent crime. The government would have to prove that you had knowledge of the exercise of lawful authority to search or seize the property and that the destruction took place during that time.
In the instant case, none of that is really an issue. To the extent that wiping a phone counts as "destruction of property" under this statute (and I'm not sure that's clearly the case), there's no doubt that it was wiped literally as it was being held by the government for search.
