Griffin v. State

Griffin v. State

Opinion

 [*346]   [**416]  Opinion by Battaglia, J.

In this case, we are tasked with determining the appropriate way to authenticate, for evidential purposes, electronically stored information printed from a social  [**417]  networking website, ¹ in particular, MySpace. ²

Antoine Levar Griffin, Petitioner, seeks reversal of his convictions in the Circuit Court for Cecil County, contending that the trial judge abused his discretion in admitting, without proper authentication, what the State alleged were several pages printed from Griffin's girlfriend's MySpace profile. ³ The Court of Special Appeals determined that the trial judge did not abuse his discretion, Griffin v. State, 192 Md. App. 518, 995 A.2d 791 (2010), and we granted Griffin's Petition for Writ of Certiorari, 415 Md. 607, 4 A.3d 512 (2010), to consider the two questions, which we have rephrased:

1. Did the trial court err in admitting a page printed from a MySpace profile alleged to be that of Petitioner's girlfriend? ⁴

 [*347]  2. Did the trial court err in allowing the prosecutor to define reasonable doubt incorrectly  [***3] over defense objection, including saying "it means this, do you have a good reason to believe that somebody other than Mr. Griffin was the person that shot Darvell Guest . . . I'm not asking you whether you can speculate and create some construct of hypothetical possibilities that would have somebody else be the shooter. . . . I'm asking you the question, do you have right now any reason, any rational reason to believe that somebody other than he was the shooter or gunman? ⁵

The State presented a conditional cross-petition, which we also granted, in which one question was posed:

Full case includes Shepard's, Headnotes, Legal Analytics from Lex Machina, and more.