State v. Lester, 293PA23-2, ___ N.C. ___ (Jan. 31, 2025)

In this Wake County case, the Supreme Court reversed the Court of Appeals decision holding the State violated the Confrontation Clause and hearsay rules by admitting exhibits of Verizon phone records. The Supreme Court held that if the records were truly machine generated, they were not hearsay or testimonial in nature, and remanded the case for the consideration of defendant’s remaining issues.

In 2022, defendant came to trial for statutory rape of a child fifteen years or younger. During the State’s case, two detectives testified about their investigation into defendant, and they referenced exhibits of phone records provided by Verizon. The two exhibits in question were a list of “the time, date, and connecting phone number for all calls to and from [defendant’s] phone between May and July 2019” and a cover letter stating the records were “true and accurate copies of the records created from the information maintained by Verizon in the actual course of business.” Slip Op. at 6. Defendant objected to the exhibits, and the State argued the records were admissible under Rule of Evidence 803(6) as business records. The trial court did not admit the records under Rule 803(6), but instead under Rule 803(24), the residual exception, as the trial court felt the State did not lay a proper foundation for business records. In State v. Lester, 291 N.C. App. 480 (2023), the Court of Appeals reversed defendant’s conviction, holding that admitting the records was a violation of defendant’s Confrontation Clause rights and the error was prejudicial, justifying a new trial.

Taking up the arguments, the Court explained that the purpose of the Confrontation Clause was to protect against the unreliable nature of out-of-court testimonial statements made by humans, specifically “ex parte examinations” offered against the accused. Slip Op. at 11. Here, the evidence in question was computer-generated data, and the Court noted this was not the type of evidence contemplated by the Confrontation Clause. After explaining the unique nature of machine-generated data and why it was more reliable that a human witness’s out-of-court statement, the Court held that ‘machine-generated raw data, if truly machine-generated,’ are ‘neither hearsay nor testimonial’ under the Confrontation Clause.” Id. at 17 (quoting State v. Ortiz-Zape, 367 N.C. 1, 10 (2013)). The Court emphasized  that “we focus here on data produced entirely by the internal operations of a computer or other machine, free from human input or intervention” in contrast to “(1) computer-stored evidence, and (2) human interpretations of computer-produced data.” Id. at 18. Because the machine-generated data did not implicate the Confrontation Clause in the same way that human interpretations of the data would, the Court determined the Court of Appeals improperly analyzed the admissibility of the exhibits in the current case.