United States v. Jackson
United States District Court for the District of Nebraska
488 F. Supp. 2d (D. Neb. 2007)
Jackson (defendant) was indicted for using his computer to try to persuade a minor to engage in sexual activity, based on online chats with a person he believed was a 14-year-old girl but who was actually a Postal Inspection Service agent posing under an alias. The agent's computer was later wiped during a routine upgrade, destroying the original chat logs, leaving only a Word document into which the agent had cut and pasted the conversation along with his own added notes; the agent admitted some offline messages were never captured in that document. Jackson's forensic expert testified that a full bit-stream image, not a manual cut-and-paste document, was the reliable way to preserve such a chat, and Jackson argued the missing offline messages would have shown he intended only to introduce the supposed girl to his grandniece; the prosecution had also let the case sit inactive for roughly four years before indictment. Jackson moved to exclude the cut-and-paste document.
Whether a cut-and-paste transcript of a destroyed online chat conversation, known to be missing some offline messages, is admissible as evidence of the chat's full content under the best evidence rule.