Why Would Someone Need to Authenticate Text Messages for Court?
In the contemporary age of technology, digital evidence is becoming increasingly important in court. Here is how to authenticate text messages for court in California.
Text messages are unfortunately a form of digital media that can easily be photoshopped and manipulated. This puts the evidence at risk of interference or invalidity. Additionally, text messages fall under the jurisdiction of California Evidence Code Section 250, which prevents any evidence from being used without first being authenticated.
Related: Can Text Messages Be Used in California Divorce Court?
How to Introduce Digital Evidence in California State Courts
Smartphones allow endless mobile communication that can be crucial evidence for a court case. In order to present documents and electronic evidence in a California state court, the accumulation of evidence must follow the California Electronic Communication Privacy Act (CPOA). The California Electronic Communication Privacy Act protects the privacy of individuals and their electronic devices, and it requires law enforcement to receive a warrant before they can access any electronic information.
To be in compliance with the CPOA, digital evidence must prove to be necessary for furthering the case. Additionally, in order to be sustainable in court, digital evidence must meet the following four components:
- It must be relevant.
- It must be authenticated.
- Its contents must not be inadmissible hearsay (able to be disproven as fake).
- It must withstand a “best evidence” objection.
Proposed digital evidence must meet the standards of both the CPOA and the four aforementioned components. The only exceptions to the protection of privacy that the CPOA ensures are if the individual gives consent or if the exception qualifies as an emergency situation. In order to meet the requirements of an emergency circumstance, the government entity must “in good faith, believe that an emergency involving danger of death or serious physical injury to any person requires access to the electronic device information” (CPOA).
Additionally, if the evidence contains metadata, the proponents must address the metadata separately. Metadata is data about the date, for example, a time stamp on a screenshot in a text message. The proponents would need to consider the time and prepare an additional foundation for it.
The Four Components of Evidence Required
Relevance is determined by the evidence’s ability to prove or disprove any disputed fact, including credibility. In order for digital evidence to qualify as relevant, the defendant must usually be tied to the evidence being presented. Specifically, the proponent must be able to make a connection between the defendant and either the phone number that sent or received the text.
Authentication of evidence requires the proponent to introduce sufficient evidence to hold that the writing is what they are claiming it is. To authenticate a text message it must hold that “by evidence the writing refers to or states matters that are unlikely to be known to anyone other than the person who is claimed by the prominent of the evidence to be the author of the writing.” California Evidence Code Section 1421.
There are no published California cases that distinctly lay out the requirements for authenticating a text message, but unpublished California opinions are consistent with the rules set for authenticating emails and chats. This includes a combination of both direct and circumstantial evidence. Here are some examples of unpublished opinions from California:
- The murder victim’s cell phone was recovered from the scene of the crime. The forensic tools used on the phone recovered the texts back and forth between victim and defendant. (People v. Lehmann (Cal. Ct. App., Sept. 17, 2014, No. G047629) 2014 WL 4634272 [Unpublished].)
- 10 of 12 text messages sent to the victim’s boyfriend from the victim’s cellular telephone following sexual assault were not properly authenticated to extent that the State’s evidence did not demonstrate that the defendant was the author of the messages. (Rodriguez v. State (2012) 128 Nev. Adv. Op. 14, [273 P.3d 845].)
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