Thursday, May 17, 2012

Pennsylvania Supreme Court to Address Issue of Authentication of Text Messages at Trial

Tort Talkers may recall that I recently reprinted on Tort Talk an article of mine on the Pennsylvania Superior Court case of Commonwealth v. Koch in which that Court discussed the parameters of authenticating text messages for admission into evidence at a criminal trial--see here.

According to an article by Ben Present in the May 17, 2012 online edition of The Legal Intelligencer, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court has agreed to hear an appeal in the Koch case, in part, over whether "unauthenticated" text messages may be admitted as evidence during a criminal trial trial.

This appears to be a case of first impression for Pennsylvania's highest court and it will be interesting to see how the issue is handled.  Surely, the decision could have an impact in civil litigation matters as well on the use of evidence pertaining electronic messages.

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