Thursday, February 9, 2012

Texas court finds MySpace profile properly authenticated by page's content

The Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas found MySpace profiles to be properly authenticated in Tienda v. State, 358 S.W.3d 633 (2012). Tienda was on trial for murder after a multiple car shootout. The victim's sister found the MySpace profiles and testified at trial as to how she found them. Subscriber reports were also obtained by subpoena from MySpace.

The court used the following circumstantial evidence to find that the MySpace pages belonged to the appellant and that he wrote the admitted posts:

  1. The page contained photographs of Tienda
  2. A post contained information about the murder victim and the music at his funeral
  3. References to Tienda's gang
  4. Posts referring to information Tienda knew
Courts have long-struggled with authentication of digital evidence. Click here for earlier posts discussing the issue.

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