It seems that People’s Court and other TV judges consider email communication to be completely admissible in their courtroom. While I haven’t seen a plaintiff or defendant deny sending the email, the fact remains that the email message could have been easily forged or altered. It doesn’t bear a signature. Furthermore even with the detail information (IP addresses and the like) from the email it is difficult to verify if a particular person wrote that exact message or not.
If a plaintiff or defendant (or their attorneys) denied the email was theirs, would the email message still be admissible in a court of law? Or do the courts view email the same as regular snail mail?
“The Florida Supreme Court observed that “email transmissions are quickly becoming a substitute for telephonic and printed communications, as well as a substitute for direct oral communications.” In Re: Amendments to Rule of Judicial Administration, 2.051-Public Access to Judicial Records, 651 So. 2d 1185 (Fla. 1995).”
Emails figured prominently in the Department of Justice vs. Microsoft trial, as just one example.
since no one’s answered this yet, i’ll go out on a limb and say yes they will be admitted in a real court of law, but the level of culpability associated with email might be at a lesser degree than that of normal mail, since it lacks century old clues such as handwriting, finger prints, physical evidence etc.
Also, judges might admit email messages but probably be aware (or be made aware by the defendant) of the fact that email headers are very easy to fake, and even if the messages were genuine and the ip were correctly traced it would be difficult to pinpoint which specific person really sent the message. My guess in this case is that it would be admissable as circumstantial evidence, but other evidence might be required to connect the criminal with the crime.
The judges cannot ignore the role email plays in the current scheme of things. However they must approach the subject cautiously.
i’m sure a lawyer will come around soon and argue his side o’ the case and shoo my answer away.
and in case i’m very wrong, i didn’t write this i was framed.
With foundational testimony, e-mail is admissible. Arguments about forgery, etc., go to the weight of the evidence, not its admissibility.
A statement made in e-mail may still be hearsay. If I e-mail Ted and write, “Bob robbed a bank last night, so we all have money to party this weekend,” that’s probably not admissible as evidence that Bob robbed a bank… not because it’s e-mail, but because it’s an out-of-court statement, offered to prove the truth of the matter asserted in the statement.
If I e-mail Ted and say, “I robbed a bank last night, so we all have money to party this weekend,” that’s also an out-of-court statement, offered to prove the truth of the matter asserted in the statement, but probably admissible as a statement against penal interest, an exception to the hearsay rule.
IANAL but as with most things in law the answer varies by jurisdiction. In Dane County where I live the judges have not allowed email into evidence, citing the unreliability of proving its source.
Recall that most of the “TV judges” are people who are, or at least are claimed to be, presiding over civil small claims cases in which the parties have agreed to arbitration in a quasi-court format, in order to make interesting cases which can be covered within 10 or 20 minutes in order to fit the TV format.
Different rules prevail in such circumstances, and I would suspect that would include rules of evidence as well.
I watched one of those shows on A & E or Court TV where they profile a murder case. There was a very interesting one where a man was murdered and the court used e-mails and AOL instant message logs to convict the wife of the murdered man of convincing her on-line lover to murder him. Her lover comitted suicide and left the evidence pointing to her guilt on a hard drive in a briefcase. I’m not positive, but I think the murder trial took place in Texas.
I’ve done some searching on google, but I can’t find any online description of this case.
Well here in MD I had a buddy who’s in jail right now and during his trail they would not allow e-mails.
I don’t understand how they really can use e-mail since I just went, in Outlook, and changed an e-mail that was sent to me. If an e-mail can be changed how do they know it wasn’t?
I can see using e-mail as a backup, ie we’ve got evidence and this helps, but not as main evidence.
Is this a per se rule? Or are you just saying that there have been cases where lack of foundational testimony has led to the exclusion of e-mail evidence?
Another interesting fact is that AOL IM conversations (yes, everything you say on IM) are recorded in a HUGE database several terabytes in size. (cite available upon request, but this is more or less common knowledge.) I do not have an example, but the contents of IM conversations have supposedly been brought up in divorce hearings and other legal proceedings.
I suppose it would be a matter of the judge/lawyer asking “Did you write this?” and up to the oath to ensure honesty.
The Supreme Court of my state ruled in a case last year that emails are not admissable as evidence due to the ease of changing pertinent facts or issues. The real issue in that case though was that the original was no longer available on the recipients ISP servers, they delete messages over 90 days old automatically. The sad part about the case is a pervert that raped a 7 year old girl got to walk.
I know the cite is weak, but it seems to support the theory. That, coupled witht eh fact that i know personally many employees of AOL (I live in Northern VA, AOL’s home), and they have all verified this with me.
This is what the defense brought up in the case I mentioned earlier. The wife denied these conversations took place, and the other party was dead, so the judge couldn’t ask him. A rep from AOL even testified that it was possible to alter the instant message logs, but that it was pretty technical.
There was a ton of other evidence that the wife had been carrying on an affair with the trigger man. She claimed she was pregant by him (they lived in different states) and e-mailed him pictures of her pretending she was showing. Then she sent more mail saying that her husband beat her and she miscarried, thus inflaming her lover to murder her husband.
As I said, it was a very interesting case. I wish I could find a cite for it.
i was framed.