Tienda v. State
Texas Court of Criminal Appeals
358 S.W.3d 633 (2012)
- Written by Angela Patrick, JD
Facts
Ronnie Tienda Jr. (defendant) was charged with shooting David Valadez and others after an altercation at a nightclub. At trial, the government (plaintiff) sought to introduce evidence of three MySpace accounts and the webpages and electronic messages associated with those accounts. The government claimed that Tienda had authored the pages and the messages, which provided details about the shootings. The government sought to authenticate the social-media webpages by showing that they contained pictures of Tienda, referred to the author wearing an ankle monitor during the time Tienda had been wearing one, used names and email addresses that matched Tienda’s known nicknames, referred to the author living in Dallas, which was where Tienda lived, referred to the gang associated with Tienda, and referred to Valadez’s death and funeral. The trial court found that this evidence was enough to allow a reasonable jury to decide that the social-media account, webpages, and electronic messages had been authored by Tienda. Once the evidence was sufficiently authenticated, it was admitted as probable statements by Tienda. Tienda was convicted and appealed, arguing that the social-media evidence should have been excluded because the government had not fully proven that he was the one responsible for creating that evidence.
Rule of Law
Issue
Holding and Reasoning (Price, J.)
What to do next…
Here's why 811,000 law students have relied on our case briefs:
- Written by law professors and practitioners, not other law students. 46,300 briefs, keyed to 988 casebooks. Top-notch customer support.
- The right amount of information, includes the facts, issues, rule of law, holding and reasoning, and any concurrences and dissents.
- Access in your classes, works on your mobile and tablet. Massive library of related video lessons and high quality multiple-choice questions.
- Easy to use, uniform format for every case brief. Written in plain English, not in legalese. Our briefs summarize and simplify; they don’t just repeat the court’s language.
