Commonwealth v. Mangel, 181 A.3d 1154 (Pa. Super. Ct. Mar. 15, 2018)

Name, hometown and school on post is not enough to prove author’s identity

On March 15, 2018, the Superior Court of Pennsylvania, provided an important reminder on the degree of direct or circumstantial evidence necessary to determine the paternity of a Facebook post to be admitted at trial.

In this case, the Superior Court agreed with the trial court’s decision. There must be affirmative evidence to corroborate the identity of the online author. A Facebook page that contained the defendant’s name, hometown and school is not sufficient to establish that the defendant actually authored the posts on the page. The Appellant presented no evidence, direct or circumstantial, tending to substantiate that Defendant created the Facebook account in question, authored the incriminated chat messages and photographs.

 

Commonwealth v. Mangel, 181 A.3d 1154 (Pa. Super. Ct. Mar. 15, 2018), is available at http://www.pacourts.us…