State v. Churchill

• Decision Date: 06 December 2011
• Docket Number: Docket No. Pen–11–87.
• Parties: STATE of Maine v. David CHURCHILL.
• Court: Maine Supreme Court

2011 ME 121

32 A.3d 1026

STATE of Maine

v.David CHURCHILL.

Docket No. Pen–11–87.

Supreme Judicial Court of Maine.

Argued: Nov. 9, 2011.Decided: Dec. 6, 2011.

Hunter J. Tzovarras, Esq. (orally), Bangor, on the briefs, for appellant David Churchill.

R. Christopher Almy, District Attorney, Susan J. Pope, Asst. Dist. Atty. (orally), Prosecutorial District V, Bangor, on the briefs, for appellee State of Maine.

Panel: SAUFLEY, C.J., and ALEXANDER, LEVY, SILVER, MEAD, GORMAN, and JABAR, JJ.

SILVER, J.

[¶ 1] David Churchill appeals from a conviction entered in the Unified Criminal Docket (Bangor, Studstrup, J.) upon a jury verdict of guilty of one count of unlawful sexual contact (Class C), 17–A M.R.S. § 255–A(1)(E) (2010). Churchill argues that the court erred by admitting in evidence a printout of an online chat between Churchill and the victim because the printout was not authenticated pursuant to M.R. Evid. 901(a). We affirm the judgment.

I. FACTS AND PROCEDURE

[¶ 2] David Churchill and the victim, a twelve-year-old girl, were at the victim's home with two of Churchill's friends from the late evening of July 20, 2009, until the early morning of July 21. Churchill, who was twenty-five years old at the time, was a friend of the victim and her mother. The victim later reported to a friend that sexual acts and contact took place between her and Churchill after her mother left for work on July 21. The victim's mother contacted the Bangor Police Department after the victim's friend informed her of the events. Churchill was charged with one count of gross sexual assault (Class A), 17–A M.R.S. § 253(1)(B) (2010), and one count of unlawful sexual contact (Class B), 17–A M.R.S. § 255–A(1)(F) (2010).

[¶ 3] On July 29, 2009, Detectives Timothy Cotton and Brent Beaulieu met with the victim at her home and arranged for her to call Churchill so that they could record the conversation and any incriminating statements Churchill might make. After several attempts to reach Churchill, his friend answered the telephone and relayed messages between Churchill and the victim. Churchill and the victim also began chatting with each other online through AOL Instant Messenger while the detectives monitored the screen and recorded the telephone call. Churchill does not dispute that he was the person with whom the victim was chatting online. During the chat he indicated that he knew the police were at the victim's house. The victim was unable to elicit any definitively incriminating or exculpatory statements from Churchill.

[¶ 4] After the conversation concluded, the victim emailed a transcript of the online chat (the “chat log”) to Detective Beaulieu at his Bangor Police Department email address. It is not clear whether the chat log was emailed as an attached document or simply inserted as text into the body of an email. During Detective Cotton's testimony at trial, the State played the recording of the telephone call between Churchill and the victim and offered a printout of the chat log in evidence.¹ Churchill objected to the admission of the chat log. He did not allege that the printout indicated any tampering or that it had actually been tampered with. Instead, he argued that the victim should have authenticated the chat log because she created the email from which the printout was generated and Detective Cotton could not be certain that the victim had not altered it before sending it to the detectives. The court conducted a voir dire examination and admitted the chat log after finding that Detective Cotton's testimony had authenticated the document as a printout of what appeared on the computer screen during the online chat.

[¶ 5] The jury returned a verdict of not guilty of gross sexual assault and guilty of unlawful sexual contact (Class C), 17–A M.R.S. § 255–A(1)(E), a lesser-included offense to Class B unlawful sexual contact. The court sentenced Churchill to thirty months' imprisonment, with all but twelve months suspended, and two years of probation. Churchill timely appealed.

II. DISCUSSION

[¶ 6] On appeal, Churchill presents one issue for review: whether the trial court erred by ruling that the chat log was authenticated and, therefore, admissible. A trial court's evidentiary ruling is reviewed for clear error or abuse of discretion. State v. Berke, 2010 ME 34, ¶ 10, 992 A.2d 1290. Electronic evidence is held to the same standard of authentication as other evidence. “Rule 901(a) articulates the standard for authentication of a proffered exhibit: the proponent must produce evidence sufficient to support a finding that the matter in question is what its proponent claims.” Id. ¶ 11 (quotation marks omitted). “The standard embodies a flexible approach to authentication reflecting a low burden of proof.” Id. (quotation marks omitted).

[¶ 7] We have previously addressed the admissibility of an online chat log pursuant to M.R. Evid. 901(b)(1) in State v. Webster, 2008 ME 119, ¶ 20, 955 A.2d 240. In Webster, a volunteer for an organization aimed at capturing sexual predators posed as a thirteen-year-old girl while engaging in a series of online chats with the defendant. Id. ¶ ¶ 2–4. A detective from the local police department monitored the chats from the organization's data center as they happened and approved each message the volunteer sent to the defendant. Id. ¶ 5. The volunteer testified that the chat logs “were ‘absolutely’ a true and accurate representation of the chat logs as they occurred on-line between [the volunteer] and [the defendant], and that they had not been tampered with.” Id. ¶ 20 (alteration omitted). We upheld the trial court's ruling that the volunteer's testimony was sufficient to establish authenticity, in part because the volunteer also testified that the chat log was protected from tampering by the organization's practice of uploading the chat logs each day to a data center consisting of three proxy servers in three different states. Id. ¶ ¶ 4, 20.

[¶ 8] Although in Webster the testimony indicated a secure storage process that protected against tampering, a particular storage process is not necessary to demonstrate that electronic evidence has not been tampered with. The hallmark of authentication pursuant to M.R. Evid. 901(b)(1) is assurance from the witness that the chat log offered in evidence is a true and accurate representation of the chat as it occurred. See id. ¶ 20. It is then up to the jury to decide whether to believe the witness. See Field &...