United States v. Hassan
- Court
- Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit (Federal circuit court)
- Decided
- 2014
- Citation
- 742 F.3d 104 (4th Cir. 2014)
- Standard applied
- FRE 902(11) with FRE 803(6) and 901 — platform records plus linkage
What the court held
Screenshots of Facebook pages and YouTube videos were self-authenticating as business records under Rule 902(11), supported by certifications from the platforms' records custodians. That was not the end of the inquiry: the trial court also required the government to prove under Rule 901 that the pages were linked to the defendants, and the exhibits were admitted only once that showing was made.
Why
Rule 902(11) permits admission of records satisfying the business-records requirements as shown by a custodian's certification, and the certifications established that the platforms created and retained the material in the course of regularly conducted activity. The court treated the custodial certification and the attribution showing as two separate requirements, satisfied here by the biographical content, interests and posting history on each page.
Our reading — not the court’s words
Why this matters in practice
Hassan is the affirmative template that Browne, Griffin and Vayner describe in the negative: custodial certification for the record, independent evidence for the person. Practitioners should read it as a checklist for assembling a social-media exhibit — obtain the platform certification through legal process, then build the linkage separately. It also shows that screenshots are not disqualified as a capture method when the platform record backs them up.
This paragraph is Legal Cyber Academy’s editorial assessment of the decision’s practical importance. The court said none of it. For what the court actually said, read the opinion.
Additional detail
Tags: Facebook · YouTube · Rule 902(11) · business records · screenshot
Cited 185times in CourtListener’s corpus at the time this entry was compiled. Treat it as a rough measure of influence, not of correctness.
Other decisions on authentication
- Tienda v. StateCourt of Criminal Appeals of Texas · 2012The court affirmed the admission of printouts from MySpace profiles attributed to the defendant, holding that the internal content of the pages — photographs, r…
- People v. GoldsmithCalifornia Supreme Court · 2014Photographs and video from an automated traffic-enforcement system were adequately authenticated by the testimony of an investigating officer, and were not hear…
- Lorraine v. Markel American Insurance Co.District Court, D. Maryland · 2007Neither party's electronic exhibits could be considered because none was authenticated: e-mails were simply attached to the motions rather than supported by aff…
- United States v. VaynerCourt of Appeals for the Second Circuit · 2014A printout of a profile page from a Russian social-networking site was admitted without adequate authentication under Rule 901, because the government offered n…
- Commonwealth v. PurdyMassachusetts Supreme Judicial Court · 2011E-mail exchanges recovered from a computer the defendant admitted owning, and for which he supplied all the passwords, were sufficiently authenticated as his, a…
- Commonwealth v. KochSupreme Court of Pennsylvania · 2014An evenly divided Supreme Court of Pennsylvania affirmed by operation of law the Superior Court's holding that drug-sales text messages recovered from the defen…
Summarised from the opinion as retrieved from CourtListener. Reference material, not legal advice. Back to the repository.