Defendant in fraud trial appealed trial judge's exclusion of allegedly exculpatory evidence on third party web sites. Defendant attempted to qualify evidence under exception to hearsay rule for business records, arguing the materials were business records of the third parties' ISPs. The court held that the postings were not business records of the ISPs, where the ISPs could access the postings but did not themselves post them, and there was no evidence that the ISPs monitored the postings. The court cited St. Clair v. Johnny's Oyster & Shrimp to support the unreliability of the records as evidence.
Opinion at http://caselaw.findlaw.com/cgi-bin/getcase.pl?court=7th&navby=case&no=992223
Keywords: criminal actions, evidence, document validation
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