Madison Genthry 
Personal injury cases are often lengthy but necessary! A personal injury lawsuit ensures you get the compensation you deserve for the pain and suffering you’re going through and to cover the expense of your current and future medical bills. But to win a personal injury case, your attorney must present solid evidence about how and why the defendant is liable for your injury. If the evidence you have is in a digital format, questions about it being admissible in court arise because it is susceptible to manipulation or forgery. However, with digital forensic processes, digital evidence can be admissible in personal injury litigation, provided it meets certain legal requirements. Three phases are largely used across jurisdictions to ensure the admissibility of digital evidence in courts.
Alt: Analyzing Digital Data
Digital Evidence Assessment
Our Kansas City personal injury lawyer understands that for digital evidence to be admissible in court, the court will ensure appropriate legal authorization was used in collecting the digital evidence. The types of legal authorization used in acquiring evidence vary by jurisdiction but they often include:
- Search warrant
- Subpoena
- Court order
In this first phase, the court also assesses the forensic relevance of the evidence, which links or rules out the defendant and the plaintiff. The evidence can also support or refute the defendant’s or plaintiff’s testimony, provide investigative leads, identify who’s liable, and so on.
Digital Evidence Consideration
In the next phase, an assessment is made on the integrity of the digital evidence such as when a video of the incident is uploaded to the cloud for safekeeping.
It examines the digital forensics procedure and tools used in assessing the evidence. Also, the competence and qualifications of the digital forensic experts who acquired, preserved, and analyzed the evidence as well as the digital forensics laboratories where the evidence was examined and handled all come into play in this phase.
Essentially, during this phase, the court seeks to determine whether scientific principles were used to acquire, preserve, and analyze the digital evidence, and that standards were met when handling and examining the evidence. Furthermore, the digital forensic expert may have to give testimony in court explaining how digital devices and other ICT-related sources work, why specific digital forensic tools were used and not others, as well as the findings and interpretation and the accuracy of the interpretations.
Digital Evidence Determination
Finally, the reliability, integrity, and authenticity of the digital evidence are assessed by the court based on the outcome of the digital forensic processes.
Factors such as the use of sound forensic tools and methods to obtain digital evidence, the testimony of expert witnesses, and digital forensic analysts to corroborate the reliability, integrity, and authenticity of the evidence.
Overall, digital evidence is admissible in court provided it establishes a fact of matter in the case, remains unaltered during the forensic process, and the results of the examination are valid. Also, the findings should be interpreted in an unbiased manner, free of errors or uncertainties as well as limitations in the interpretation of the result. Ultimately, these three phases consolidate the common legal and technical requirements for digital evidence admissibility across jurisdictions.
