Sublet v. State
| Decision Date | 23 April 2015 |
| Docket Number | No. 59 Sept. Term, 2014,No. 42 Sept. Term, 2014,No. 60 Sept. Term, 2014,42 Sept. Term, 2014,59 Sept. Term, 2014,60 Sept. Term, 2014 |
| Citation | 442 Md. 632,113 A.3d 695 |
| Parties | Albert SUBLET IV v. STATE of Maryland. Tavares D. Harris v. State of Maryland. Carlos Alberto Monge–Martinez v. State of Maryland. |
| Court | Court of Special Appeals of Maryland |
Matthew Joseph (Douglas Baruch, Fried, Frank, Harris, Shiver & Jacobson, LLP, Washington, DC, Anne K. Olesen, George Washington University Community Law Clinics, Washington, DC), on brief, for petitioner in 42, Sept. Term, 2014.
Edward J. Kelley, Asst. Atty. Gen. (Brian E. Frosh, Atty. Gen. of Maryland, Baltimore, MD), on brief, for respondent in 42, Sept. Term, 2014.
Daniel Kobrin, Asst. Public Defender (Paul B. DeWolfe, Public Defender of Maryland, Baltimore, MD), on brief, for appellant in 59, Sept. Term, 2014.
Brenda Gruss, Asst. Atty. Gen. (Douglas F. Gansler, Atty. Gen. of Maryland, Baltimore, MD), on brief, for appellee in 59, Sept. Term, 2014.
Michael T. Torres, Asst. Public Defender (Paul B. DeWolfe, Public Defender of Maryland, Baltimore, MD), on brief, for petitioner in 60, Sept. Term, 2014.
Todd W. Hesel, Asst. Atty. Gen. (Douglas F. Gansler, Atty. Gen. of Maryland, Baltimore, MD), on brief, for respondent in 60, Sept. Term, 2014.
Argued before BARBERA, C.J., HARRELL, BATTAGLIA, GREENE, ADKINS, McDONALD, WATTS, JJ.
The rapid rise of social networking websites,1 themselves a branch of social media,2 once again gives us cause to explore the authentication of documents related to this genre, under Maryland Rule 5–901, which provides that the “requirement of authentication or identification as a condition precedent to admissibility is satisfied by evidence sufficient to support a finding that the matter in question is what its proponent claims”, in three cases, Sublet v. State, Harris v. State and Monge–Martinez v. State, consolidated for the purposes of this opinion. All three cases involve the same legal issues, those being the elucidation and implementation of our opinion in Griffin v. State, 419 Md. 343, 19 A.3d 415 (2011), in which we addressed the admissibility of a screenshot3 of a MySpace4 page, and its application to the authentication of screenshots of messages allegedly sent through social networking websites; in Sublet, via a Facebook5 timeline;6 in Harris, on Twitter7 through “direct messages”8 and public “tweets”;9 and, in Monge–Martinez, through Facebook messages.10
We shall hold that, in order to authenticate evidence derived from a social networking website, the trial judge must determine that there is proof from which a reasonable juror could find that the evidence is what the proponent claims it to be. We shall hold in Sublet that the trial court did not err in excluding the admission of the four pages of the Facebook conversation. We shall hold in Harris that the trial court did not err in admitting the “direct messages” and “tweets” in evidence. We shall also hold in Monge–Martinez that the trial court did not err in admitting the Facebook messages authored by Monge–Martinez.
Albert Sublet, the first Petitioner herein, was charged by indictment in the Circuit Court for Anne Arundel County with three counts of first degree assault, second degree assault and reckless endangerment, as well as with one count of carrying a deadly weapon with intent to injure. The charges against Sublet arose out of a fight that occurred among Sublet, Chrishell Parker, her mother and her sister, in late October of 2012. According to the State's theory of the case, Sublet became aggressive when he arrived at Ms. Parker's apartment to pick up his girlfriend, Ymani Conner, and initiated an altercation; Sublet urged, conversely, that it was Ms. Parker who was the instigator.
During cross-examination of Ms. Parker, Sublet's counsel sought to introduce into evidence four pages alleged to have been a printout from Ms. Parker's Facebook page of a “conversation” among seven different individuals. The document submitted to Ms. Parker for review consisted of four pages and written across the top of each page was “printed on 10•30•12 from Facebook”.11 Each of the nineteen entries in the four pages contained the name of the profile that had allegedly created it, as well as the time the entry was created. Next to the name of the profile was also a picture. The four pages were collectively received for identification as Defense Exhibit A.12
With respect to the conversation in issue, the first page began on “Saturday” with a statement associated with the profile “Chanica DatBytch Brown”, which Ms. Parker identified as Ms. Brown's Facebook username, while the fourth post on the first page was related to the name “Cece Parker”. When asked if she had discussed the altercation on Facebook, Ms. Parker stated that she had connected with Chanica Brown through Facebook and that she herself used the name Cece Parker:
The posts depicted on the first page were:
On the second page was a single entry affiliated with the user name “Zaquane Graham” lamenting being left out of the conversation:
On page three, Ms. Brown purportedly conversed with “ Zaquane Graham” and “Tonisha Brown”:
The fourth page contained six posts; an initial one identified with “Chanica DatBytch Brown”, followed by two more posts allegedly from “Cece Parker”:
At trial, Ms. Parker was confronted with the four pages by Sublet's counsel, who asked her to “look this over” and then asked her if she had “said those things” attributed to her, to which she agreed. When Sublet's counsel then inquired as to whether Ms. Parker disliked Ms. Conner, Ms. Parker asserted that she did not know Ms. Conner prior to the night of the incident and, furthermore, urged that she did not have “any personal animosity against Ms. Conner”. As defense counsel began to ask about the content of the entry attributed to Ms. Parker on the fourth page that read, “her bf is a dead man walkn”, the trial judge intervened to address the issue of authentication of the Exhibit:
Outside the presence of the jury, the trial judge stated that, “it [was] not clear to [him]” that “[Ms. Parker] agrees that everything is something that she wrote.” The judge then permitted Sublet's attorney to continue questioning Ms. Parker “to see if there are any things that say [‘Cece’] that she does not agree that she wrote”.
During further questioning by Sublet's counsel, Ms. Parker affirmed that it was her picture next to the entries allegedly authored by “Cece Parker”. Sublet's attorney then directed Ms. Parker to “Look at all of the pages”, “If you find one that you didn't write, please let us know”, to which Ms. Parker asserted she did not write the entries on the last page, and she did not understand where they came from.
Upon further exploration by Sublet's counsel regarding the genesis of...
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