Court of Appeal of Louisiana Finds Photo of Facebook Post Was Properly Authenticated at Murder Trial
Similar to its federal counterpart, Louisiana Code of Evidence Article 901(B)(4) provides that evidence can be authenticated through “[a]ppearance, contents, substance, internal patterns, or other distinctive characteristics, taken in conjunction with circumstances.” In “The Social Medium,” I argued that courts have set the bar too low in authenticating social media evidence under this rule. The latest example can be found in the recent opinion of the Court of Appeal of Louisiana, Third Circuit, in State v. Coker, 422 So.3d 436 (La.App.3rd 2025).
In Coker, “[a] jury convicted Defendant, Matthew V. Coker, of second degree murder in the death of Floyd Coker.” After he was convicted, Coker appealed, claiming, inter alia, that
the trial court erred when it admitted a photograph of a Facebook post purportedly made by Defendant. The photograph, taken by a police officer, was of a testifying witness’s mother’s phone, despite the witness not being Facebook “friends” with Defendant. The post, timestamped as having been posted thirteen hours before the screenshot of it was taken on the morning of March 26, stated “RIP mother fucker you have bothersthqt think your trash in there eyes let them have there day they do perfect fuck them I want nothing to do with them bye Muirfield unhappy.” [Coker] argue[d] that the post was not properly authenticated and that there was no way to prove that the1 statement came from [Coker] or that it came from his Facebook profile as opposed to a fake one.
The court disagreed, citing Article 901(B)(4) and concluding that
the admission of the Facebook post was within the trial court’s discretion. While the witness did not take the screenshot herself nor was the post on her phone, she testified that she saw the post herself. Further, despite the fact that the witness did not have specific knowledge that the post came from Defendant, the screenshot presented in court contained both a time stamp and a profile picture matching Defendant’s appearance. Thus, a reasonable juror could have concluded that it was more likely than not that the post came from Defendant, considering his appearance and other circumstances. The time stamp indicated the post was made thirteen hours before the screenshot was taken on the morning of March 26, 2022, within the same timeframe as the beating. Although Defendant raised the specter of the use of a “fake profile,” the circumstances surrounding the time stamp in relation to the timeframe of the offense render any such alternative explanations dubious.
Simply put, I think this sets the bar for authentication too low. All we know is that the Facebook page had the defendant’s picture as its profile picture. In my opinion, that is not the accumulation of circumstantial evidence needed to authenticated evidence under the rule.