Emails as Evidence

Hi - Just a quick question:

Emails that I have in my inbox: according to British law, are these admissable as evidence?

 

To the best of my knowledge, yes. But you have to be able to prove that they came from, and were sent by, the person you claim sent them.

Haven't internal memo's sent via email shown up in newspapers (ie leaked documents) and court cases before??

 

I've been searching for a few minutes and have turned up a few articles which indicate that you're correct... cheers..

ie: www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article1642638.ece

 

All of my email is protected by my google/gmail password

 

Ya, and Google would never roll on you...

 

Yes.

But If I sent you an email saying x is y and then it cost you money and then you took me to court... could you use that against me?

 

Sgorman - as was previously indicated, if they can prove that YOU (And not anybody else within reasonable doubt) sent that email, yes.

 

Microsoft has a solution for keeping emails for legal purposes - you can read more at http://www.123together.com/deha/exchange_archiving_compliance.xhtml

 

The legal position is this:

in criminal cases, an email could not be used against you, and in any event you require an independent source of concurrent evidence to act as corroboration - if you don't have 2 pieces of evidence pointing to the main point, you can go down.

in civil cases: probably would be admissible, although you can raise the point that email is very insecure and not necessarily evidence of coming from a specific person, etc etc...

Remember also - beyond reasonable doubt only applies in criminal cases, and you wouldn't have to prove anything in court unless you raised a special defence.

 

I don't think "within reasonable doubt" would apply here: "reasonable doubt is a concept which arises only in criminal law, not civil law. Unless deemed for some reason more prejudicial than probative, they would be admissible in evidence if that was simply what they could be interpreted as showing, on one viewpoint, and it would be up to the court to decide how much credence they should be given. There isn't even an "on the balance of the probabilities" test for individual items of evidence in civil cases. That's an overall impression arrived at by the court, after assessing the weight of all the items of evidence collectively. Emails can be admitted in evidence but, as with all evidence, the other side is free to challenge their veracity/reliability.

 

Well, in my opinion, if it was sent from something like Yahoo mail, or hotmail, it probably wouldn't be admissable. And if it was, it could just be easily knocked down. If it was sent from an ISP providers email, like Comcast or Verizon, then it would be more usefull. Of course, all of this is coming from a kid who took PLAW 101, so don't trust my judgement.