United States v. Browne
834 F.3d 403 (2016)
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Rule of Law:
Social media communications are not self-authenticating as business records under Federal Rule of Evidence 902(11) via a custodian's certificate because the user-generated content is not created or verified in the course of the company's regularly conducted activity. However, such communications can be authenticated under Rule 901 through sufficient extrinsic circumstantial evidence that links the defendant to the account and the messages.
Facts:
- Tony Jefferson Browne created a Facebook account under the name 'Billy Button.'
- Using this account, Browne exchanged messages and sexually explicit photos with an 18-year-old woman, Nicole Dalmida.
- Browne threatened Dalmida and obtained the password to her Facebook account.
- Using Dalmida’s account, Browne contacted four of her minor friends (T.P., A.M., J.B., and J.S.) and solicited explicit photos from them.
- Browne communicated with the minors through his 'Billy Button' account and a specific cell phone number ('the 998 number'), threatening them with public exposure of their photos unless they performed sexual acts.
- Browne arranged to meet three of the minors in person and sexually assaulted one of them.
- Upon his arrest, agents seized a cell phone from Browne's residence which matched the 998 number and contained photos of the minors.
- Agents also executed a search warrant on the 'Billy Button' Facebook account, and Facebook provided records of the chats.
Procedural Posture:
- The United States prosecuted Tony Jefferson Browne in the U.S. District Court.
- At trial, the government introduced five Facebook chat logs into evidence, along with a certificate of authenticity from a Facebook records custodian.
- Over the objection of Browne's defense counsel, the District Court admitted the Facebook records.
- A jury convicted Browne on twelve counts, including production of child pornography and coercion of a minor.
- Browne (Appellant) appealed his conviction to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, arguing the Facebook records were improperly authenticated. The United States is the Appellee.
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Issue:
Does a certificate from a social media company's records custodian, stating that chat logs are business records kept in the regular course of activity, sufficiently authenticate the authorship of the messages under Federal Rule of Evidence 902(11) without requiring additional extrinsic evidence?
Opinions:
Majority - Krause, J.
No. A certificate from a social media custodian under Rule 902(11) is insufficient to authenticate the authorship of user-generated messages because their substantive content does not qualify as a business record under Rule 803(6). The government's argument misunderstands the business records exception, which is rooted in the reliability of records a business creates and relies upon for its own operations. Facebook's system automatically records that communications took place between accounts at certain times, but Facebook does not verify the content of those communications or the identity of the user behind the account in its regular course of business. Therefore, the certificate cannot authenticate what matters for relevance: that the defendant authored the messages. However, the chat logs were still properly admitted because the government provided overwhelming extrinsic evidence to authenticate them under Rule 901. This evidence included Browne's admissions of owning the Facebook account and the phone, victims' testimony corroborating the chat contents, in-person meetings with Browne arranged via the chats, and personal identifying information within the messages that matched Browne. While the admission of one chat log between two victims was inadmissible hearsay, it constituted harmless error due to the overwhelming weight of the properly admitted evidence.
Analysis:
This decision clarifies the evidentiary standards for authenticating social media and other user-generated electronic content in federal court. It establishes a critical precedent that the 'business records' exception and its self-authentication mechanism under Rule 902(11) cannot be used as a shortcut to prove authorship of online communications. The court reinforces that prosecutors must build a foundation for admissibility using traditional circumstantial evidence under Rule 901, thereby requiring a case-specific factual showing to link a defendant to an online persona. This holding prevents the automatic admission of potentially falsified or misattributed online evidence and solidifies a more rigorous, fact-intensive approach for authenticating digital communications in criminal trials.
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