Court Backs Facebook in Privacy Fight With Defense Lawyers

Court Backs Facebook in Privacy Fight With Defense Lawyers

Criminal defendants can’t force Facebook and other social media companies to turn over private user content ahead of a trial, a California appeals court has ruled.

Reversing a lower court, the ruling was a victory for Facebook in a case that pitted statutory privacy protections against rights to due process.

The case involved a murder prosecution of two defendants, Derrick Hunter and Lee Sullivan, who were accused of a drive-by shooting. Before trial, their lawyers served subpoenas on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter seeking private content from user accounts of the victim and a witness. Defense lawyers, according to court documents, were trying to look into claims that the victim and the witness had made threatening comments in social media posts before the shooting.

Facebook sought to quash the subpoenas, arguing that disclosure of the user content was barred by the federal Stored Communications Act, a 29-year-old law that restricts unauthorized access and disclosure of private online information. After a trial court refused to quash the subpoenas, the company appealed.

In Tuesday’s ruling, the First District Court of Appeal in San Francisco disagreed with the trial court. The judges on the appellate panel said the Stored Communications Act doesn’t directly give criminal defendants access to private online communications. They concluded that constitutional concerns of the defendants in the case don’t outweigh the privacy protections of the law.

Law Blog has reached out to attorneys for the defendants and Facebook for comment.

Here’s the key passage from the opinion, written by Justice Terence Bruiniers:

In sum, we find no support for the trial court’s order for pretrial production of information otherwise subject to the SCA’s protections. The..criminal defendant’s right to pretrial discovery is limited, and lacks any solid constitutional foundation. Simply alleging that the material they seek might be helpful to their defense does not meet Defendants’ burden to show that the SCA is unconstitutional in denying them access to protected information at this stage of the proceeding.

We emphasize that our ruling is limited to the pretrial context in which the trial court’s order was made. Nothing in this opinion would preclude Defendants from seeking at trial the production of the materials sought here…where the trial court would be far better equipped to balance the Defendants’ need for effective cross-examination and the policies the SCA is intended to serve.

Justice Bruiniers also noted that allowing the subpoenas to go forward would have set a lower bar for defendants than for the prosecution, which must obtain a search warrant to access the kind of information that the defense lawyers wanted Facebook to turn over.

How We Can Help
If you, a friend or a family member find themselves in a situation such as this, please call the Law Office of Scott A. Ferris, P.A. at 305 670-3330 right away. Scott A. Ferris, Esq. is a licensed criminal law attorney who has been practicing law since 1987. He is available whenever you need him to defend your rights. Please learn about our firm at www.FerrisLawFirm.com.
Republished by the Law Office of Scott A. Ferris, P.A.