Who’s Afraid of Social Media Evidence?

Quick blurb registering my skepticism of the Mississippi Supreme Court’s recent ruling that Facebook messages from a defendant in a murder case were insufficiently authenticated.  The Court’s outsized  fear of electronic evidence seems to drive its conclusion that the name and photo that accompany a Facebook message (both matching the defendant), plus the wife’s testimony that the Facebook messages to her, in fact, came from her husband, was not sufficient to authenticate the messages.

Recall the standard is simply that a jury could find by a preponderance of the evidence (50%) that “the matter in question is what its proponent claims.”  M.R.E. 901(a).  Hard to imagine that the above evidence – particularly a spouse’s testimony about receiving a Facebook message from her husband – did not meet that standard.

The Mississippi Supreme Court saw it differently, however.  Here is the pertinent language from the opinion: (Smith v. Mississippi, No. 2012–CT–00218–SCT (April 17, 2014))

“The State failed to make a prima facie case that the Facebook profile whence the message came belonged to Smith, as the only information tying the Facebook account to Smith is that the messages purport to be from a ‘Scott Smith’ and are accompanied by a very small, grainy, low-quality photograph that we can only assume purports to be Smith.”

…

“The State failed to make a prima facie case that the messages were actually sent by Smith.  The only information tying the actual messages to Smith is Waldrop’s testimony that they were Smith’s messages to her. . . .  She did not testify as to how she knew that the Facebook account was Smith’s, nor did she testify as to how she knew that Smith actually authored the Facebook messages.”

H/T Jessica Smith (‏@ProfJessieSmith)