Massachusetts Criminal Defense Lawyer Blog

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled in the case of Commonwealth v. Williams, decided May 21, 2010, that the trial judge committed error in allowing the Commonwealth to admit into evidence statements from a Myspace page of the defendant's brother. The Court held that in order for evidence to be admitted at a Massachusetts criminal trial, the item must be what the proponents of the evidence represent it to be. This is known in criminal law as the requirement that evidence be authenticated.

The SJC held that the myspace page should not have been admitted because there was no testimony as to how secure the Myspace page is, who can access the page and whether codes are needed for access. The court compared the contents of a Myspace page to a telephone call from a particular phone number and stressed that without more evidence it can be presumed that the owner of the phone made the telephone call.

Under Williams, it will be difficult for prosecutor to have contents of social networking sites, like Myspace, facebook and twitter admitted into evidence. The Government could attempt to admit contents of social networking sites in a vary of criminal cases, including Massachusetts domestic assault and battery charges, restraining order violations and other cases where potential statements and evidence can be found on this sites.