North Carolina Criminal Law Blog

The North Carolina State Bar recently adopted 2014 FEO 8, an ethics opinion concerning lawyers’ and judges’ use of social media. The opinion answers some questions, but raises others.

One of my all-time favorite emails was received from a prosecutor who was handling a drug trafficking case. The email included a picture, plucked from what purported to be the defendant’s Facebook page, showing the defendant sitting on a pile of cash (later determined to be $1.6 million!), holding an AK-47. Jeff has written (here) about authenticating photographs from social media sites. But what of the other evidence that is mined from social media—how is that authenticated? A recent Second Circuit case adheres to the line that the relevant standard isn’t particularly high but finds that the prosecution didn’t meet it in this case.

Suppose that the defendant is charged with a gang-related murder. The State seeks to establish that the defendant is a gang member by introducing a photograph that a detective found […]