Bell Case Subpoena

[Greg Broiles]

On Tue, Jan 09, 2001 at 05:38:01PM -0800, Eric Murray wrote:
> 
> I'm not a lawyer, but my guess is that, unless there is a very compelling
> argument from expert witness which "proves" to the judge or jury that
> the emails in a particular case are forged, emails would be accepted in
> pretty much any (US) court.  I beleive that's how written evidence is
> treated now, even though handwriting and signatures can be forged.  If a
> handwriting expert is brought in and "proves" that there's a forgery, the
> evidence is thrown out or the judge or jury disregard it as appropriate.

I think this is right on. It's important to remember that evidence
(especially scientific or technical evidence) is subject to a two-step
vetting process - there's initial review by the judge, who must be
convinced that the evidence is potentially reliable and relevant; and
then the judge or jury must decide that they want to believe the 
evidence after it's been admitted. There's plenty of evidence which is
both admissible (and admitted) yet ignored by juries. 

> (Greg, have there been any cases where email evidence has been shown
> in a court to be forged?  Has this even been attempted, other than
> Bell's case?)

I don't have an appellate case or a cite at hand immediately - I do know
that there was a case here in Silicon Valley where an ex-employee and
ex-girlfriend of Larry Ellison (CEO of Oracle) falsified an email which
purported to prove that she was the victim of sexual harassment at
Oracle - she lost her lawsuit against Oracle and was subsequently
convicted of perjury. (See 4 J. Tech Law & Policy 1 at para 31;
<http://journal.law.ufl.edu/~techlaw/4/Dixon.html> or a Seattle 
Times article at
<http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/news/local/html98/love_092798.html>).

--
Greg Broiles gbroiles at netbox.com
PO Box 897
Oakland CA 94604