Emails - use as evidence, 4

On Mar 3, 7:34 am, Herb <her...@mail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, 02 Mar 2007 07:02:22 -0500, "Mike Jacobs" <mjacobs...@gmail.com> wrote:

> >all OP has to do to
> >uphold his authentication of the document is to stick to his guns and
> >continue to testify that the document is what it purports to be.
>
> What you say was all rather compelling, Mike, until this point. We are
> talking, after all, about a divorce case: the archetypical "he said /
> she said". The person who introduces an email has no more claim to
> credibility than the person who denies it.

Correct.   And that goes to whether the evidence will be BELIEVED, in a he-said/she-said case.

But it doesn't prevent the disputed document from being ADMITTED into evidence, which I assumed was all that OP was asking about.   If it didn't even get into evidence, the factfinder would not get to hear OP's side of the story, so it would just be a "she-said" case.   The judge or jury will get to hear both sides and decide which one they believe, after all the evidence is in, as long as OP jumps thru the necessary hoops to even get his proffered document admitted into evidence.   Which, based on the great level of confusion exhibited by most of the posters on this thread, I'm not real confident at this point he will be able to do.  Perhaps OP ought to have a lawyer representing him at this contested custody hearing?  It's his call.

> E.g., one party can
> introduce an email wherein the opponent admits they were cheating. The
> opponent can easily deny that they were cheating, and also deny that
> the email is authentic. (The opponent can even introduce an email
> wherein the 1st party has threatened to create fake emails, to use as
> faked evidence of non-existent cheating.)

Yes, they could all do that.   But the disputed document DOES get to be admitted into evidence based simply on the proponent's testimony that it is authentic.  The rest goes to its weight, not admissibility.

> So that brings us right back to the question of proof, and this
> offshoot: if one party is deliberately lying, they take the chance of
> being exposed by technical proof, and then their credibility on other
> matters suffers also. (OTOH, people might soon generally learn to say,
> "I don't recall ever sending any email like that", as they currently
> do when denying spoken words.)

Which side the judge or jury chooses to believe will depend on ALL the credibility factors based on ALL the evidence admitted at the hearintg, not just this one document.   Of course OP has to do more than just get the document admitted into evidence if he wants it to be believed.   But only he (or his lawyer, if he's smart enough to have one) knows what facts he will have to bring out, to establish his own credibility and poke holes in his ex's.

> I'd imagine that the matter of cost can vary widely.

Yes, it does, which is why IMO the full-blown scientific analysis is likely to happen only in a case where a very large value is at stake, to make it worth it.

> As a side note: on the tv courtroom shows, I've always seen printouts
> of emails being introduced without question as to authenticity. Maybe
> everybody with the show is too dumb to know better, or maybe it's all
> been agreed to beforehand.

Actually, in most cases where both parties have lawyers, it IS agreed in advance, either directly bwetyeen the lawyers, or through pre-trial discovery requests asking the other side to point out any of the requester's documents they do have authenticity questions about, or through the judge decreeing that all documents exchanged between the parties before trial (e.g. at a pretrial conference) will be deemed authentic and admissible UNLESS the parties raise an issue at that time, which the judge can then resolve BEFORE the trial begins, to save the jury's time from sitting by while the parties engage in needless wrangling at the bench.over whether to admit one document or another.

If OP is pro se, however, and especially if he is planning to "spring" this document on his ex as a surprise at trial, he is going to have to jump thru all the legally required hoops then and there, or else risk having the document not be accepted into evidence by the judge to even have its contents considered in deciding the ultimate issues.

--
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Mike Jacobs
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