State v. Thompson Tells a Tale of Two Facebook Screenshots

After Roshawn Thompson picked up his cousin Kendall Rascoe from the Greenville mall in November 2014, Thompson and a friend, Andre Grey, robbed Rascoe at gunpoint. At Thompson’s armed robbery trial, his defense attorney sought to cross examine Rascoe about Facebook messages he sent to Thompson earlier in the day asking whether Thompson could get some marijuana for him while he was in Greenville. Rascoe denied sending the message and testified that he just happened to run into Thompson at the mall. The State objected to the admission of the screenshot of the messages. Later in the trial, the State sought to introduce a screenshot of a picture of Thompson and Grey copied from Thompson’s Facebook page. Rascoe showed the investigating detective the picture for purposes of identifying Thompson and Grey. Thompson objected to the admission of the screenshot, in which both of his middle fingers were extended. How did the trial court rule?  Did it make the right call? At trial. The State objected to the screenshot of the Facebook messages on two grounds. First, it said it had not received the screenshot in reciprocal discovery.  Second, it said that the message had not been authenticated. Defense counsel responded by stating that he did not seek to admit the document but only wanted to use it to “‘hit [Rascoe’s] incredibility, impeach his testimony and ask him some questions.’” The trial court sustained the objection. The judge told defense counsel that he could ask Rascoe about the messages, but he could [...]