Skip to main content

Admissibility of Facebook Evidence: Delaware Edition



Parker v. State of Delaware - Delaware Supreme Court

Facts:  Note:  The facts of this case dealt with an assault (non-employment related) and subsequent Facebook posts by the alleged attacker, Parker, in regard to the assault.  At trial, the State of Delaware sought to introduce the Facebook posts into evidence.  Over Parker's objections, the trial court admitted the Facebook posts into evidence and the jury convicted her.  The Superior Court adopted the Texas approach in regard to the introduction of the Facebook posts.  Parker appealed.

Holding:  The Delaware Supreme Court affirmed the lower court's decision to adopt the Texas approach in regard to the introduction of the Facebook posts and affirmed the lower court's ruling.  The Supreme Court distinguished between the Texas and Maryland approaches to the introduction of social media evidence at trial.

  • The Texas approach (from the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals case Tienda v. State) provides that when a party seeks to introduce social media evidence at trial, any form of verification under the Rules of Evidence can be used to authenticate it.  This is a much easier legal standard for the proponent of evidence to clear.  
  • The Maryland approach (from the Maryland Court of Appeals case Griffin v. State) provides that when a party seeks to introduce social media evidence at trial, the proponent must introduce some sort of evidence to show the posts are authentic.  Supporters of this approach point to the fact that social media posts can be faked or inauthentic, and this heightened evidentiary standard protects against the introduction of improper evidence.

After review of these two different standards, the Supreme Court held that the Texas approach is the proper way to authenticate social media evidence.  Consequently, the lower court's decision to adhere to the Texas approach, in regard to the introduction of Parker's Facebook posts, was held to be proper and the conviction was upheld.

The Takeaway:  By following the approach adopted by Texas, Delaware has clarified that social media evidence should be treated like any other type of evidence.  When an employer seeks to introduce social media evidence at trial, any form of verification under the Rules of Evidence can be used to authenticate it.  Rather than requiring the proponent to offer evidence to demonstrate that a social media post is authentic, this standard adopted by Delaware should make it easier for the proponent to introduce the evidence at trial.  

Given the increasing number of times that social media evidence such as Facebook and Twitter posts are being introduced by employers as evidence at trial, this ruling makes it easier to authenticate the evidence and actually get it into trial.

Judgment:  The Delaware Supreme Court established that that when a party seeks to introduce social media evidence at trial, any form of verification under the Rules of Evidence can be used to authenticate it. 

Majority Opinion Judge:  Judge Ridgely

Date:  February 5, 2014

Opinion:  http://courts.delaware.gov/opinions/download.aspx?ID=200710

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

NLRB: Discussion Among Employees About Tip Pooling is Protected Concerted Activity

  This Advice Memorandum from the National Labor Relations Board’s Associate General Counsel, Jayme Sophir, addressed whether employees which discussed and complained about tip pooling at work constituted protected concerted activity. In relevant part, an employer in New York operated a chain of steakhouses.  While tip pooling was in place at these steakhouses, some of the employees objected to it on the grounds that it was not transparent and improperly divided tips among the workers.  Employees were told not to complain or talk to each other about the tip pool and were told that doing so would endanger their jobs.  Despite the employer later attempting to provide some clarity as to how the tips were being divided, rancor still existed among some employees.  At one point, the employees were told by a general manager that some employees that had been talking about the tip pool were “cleared out” and the employer would continue to do so. In the Advice Memorandum, it was noted that emplo
Post a Comment
Read more

What I’ve Been Reading This Week

A few years ago, I remember when the “Fight for $15” movement was taking off around the country.  Lo and behold, it appears that a $15/hour minimum wage is not the stopping point, which should be no surprise.  As the below article notes, New York is aggressively moving to ramp up hourly wage rates even higher.  While all the  below articles are worth a read, I called particular attention to that one. As always, below are a couple article that caught my eye this week. Disney World Workers Reject Latest Contract Offer Late last week, it was announced that workers at Disney World had rejected the most recent contract offer from the company, calling on their employer to do better.  As Brooks Barnes at The New York Times writes, the unions that represent about 32,000 workers at Disney World reported their members resoundingly rejected the 5 year contract offer which would have seen workers receive a 10% raise and retroactive increased back pay.  While Disney’s offer would have increased pa
Post a Comment
Read more

Utah Non-Compete Bill Falters in House

Last month, a non-compete bill sponsored by Representative Brian Greene (Republican from Pleasant Grove) & up for vote in the Utah House failed to make it through the Legislature.  The bill sought to ban enforcement of non-competes if they came after a worker was already employed, given no compensation (such as a bonus or promotion) for signing the non-compete, and laid off within six months.  However, by a 22 - 49 vote, the bill was resoundingly defeated after some business groups lobbied to kill the non-compete bill.  One group in particular, The Free Enterprise Utah coalition, argued that the Utah State Legislature should hold off on any changes to non compete laws in the state until a survey about non competes was done among Utah businesses.  Representative Greene had countered this claim and argued that a survey was not needed to show that the current non compete laws in the states allowed many businesses, including some small high tech companies in the state, to per
Post a Comment
Read more