The California Supreme Court has ruled that faxed copies may be admitted as evidence at trial under certain circumstances.
The ruling stems from the case of Danny Skiles, who was found guilty in 2007 of burglary and receiving stolen property. Separate from the jury trial on these charges, a court trial was held to determine whether a prior conviction in Alabama should be counted as a serious felony under California's three-strikes law. Certified copies of court documents from the Alabama conviction were introduced by the prosecution and deemed admissible as evidence. None of these documents, however, had a description of the manslaughter charge to which the defendant pled guilty. This description was needed to determine whether the defendant had inflicted great bodily injury. During a recess, the prosecuting attorney obtained a faxed copy of the needed document, which was submitted as evidence when the court trial resumed. The defendant's attorney objected that the document should not be admitted because it was a photocopy. The court overruled this objection and the description of the Alabama conviction was used to establish it as a strike. As a second strike offender, Skiles was sentenced to nine years in state prison.
It's important to note that the Supreme Court said that a faxed copy on its own would not qualify as admissible evidence. A faxed document qualifies under secondary evidence rules when its authenticity can be verified by other documents that have already been admitted into evidence. In Skiles case, the certified documents from the Alabama case could be used to verify the authenticity of the fax, which had the same certification stamp and court clerk signature as the previously certified documents.
