Fort Lauderdale Criminal Attorney Blog
Most domestic violence cases in Broward County involve two people, one version of events each, and no independent witnesses. Prosecutors fill that gap with evidence, which increasingly, is digital. Screenshots of text threads, doorbell camera clips, and cell phone location records now drive more domestic violence prosecutions in Fort Lauderdale than physical injuries do. Each of those categories carries a legal requirement that the State frequently overlooks, and every Fort Lauderdale domestic violence attorney should be testing those requirements before trial.
Screenshots Do Not Authenticate Themselves
A text message is a writing. Section 90.901, Florida Statutes, requires authentication as a condition precedent to admissibility, which means the proponent must produce evidence sufficient to support a finding that the item is what it claims to be. A printed screenshot showing a name and a phone number does not satisfy that burden by itself.
The Fourth District Court of Appeal, which governs Broward County, made the point directly in the civil case of Walker v. Harley-Anderson, 301 So. 3d 299 (Fla. 4th DCA 2020). (Note that domestic violence injunctions often arise from criminal cases, but they can be filed independently in the civil justice system as well.) The petitioner in that Florida stalking injunction case offered threatening text messages she attributed to the respondent. The messages were not recovered from the respondent’s phone under a search warrant, and no circumstantial evidence tied her to their authorship. The Fourth DCA held that the trial court abused its discretion in admitting them.
Authentication can be established through distinctive characteristics, contextual detail, or extrinsic evidence, as the court explained in Symonette v. State, 100 So. 3d 180 (Fla. 4th DCA 2012). Where the State cannot make that showing, the consequence is severe. The text messages in Walker were the only evidence supporting the injunction, so the appellate court reversed and ordered the petition dismissed.
The Doorbell Camera Records More Than Video
Video from a Ring or Nest camera can helped the accused in a domestic violence injunction matter. It fixes times. It shows who arrived, who left, and who came back. It contradicts testimony that a person was present for hours when the footage shows four minutes. Although technically this can help either party, it is the prosecution / civil complainant who bears the burden of proof in injunction cases. Eyewitness testimony, however, is notoriously fallible, especially when emotions are running high. If their version doesn’t exactly match the digital evidence, it can be cause to dismiss the case.
The audio track is a different matter. Florida is an all-party consent state. Section 934.03, Florida Statutes, makes it unlawful to intentionally intercept any wire, oral, or electronic communication without the prior consent of every party. An oral communication under Section 934.02(2) is an utterance made by a person who exhibits a reasonable expectation that it is not being intercepted. A visitor speaking on a public sidewalk may lack that expectation. A spouse speaking inside the home almost certainly has it.
That distinction reverses the usual dynamic in these cases. Section 934.06 bars the use of an unlawfully intercepted communication as evidence in any proceeding, and Section 934.10 gives the aggrieved party a civil remedy. An accuser who placed a recording device inside a shared residence to capture a partner’s statements did not just create inadmissible evidence. That person may have committed a third degree felony.
Location Data Now Runs Through a Fourth Amendment Filter
The Supreme Court decided Chatrie v. United States on June 29, 2026, holding that law enforcement conducts a Fourth Amendment search when it obtains a person’s cell phone location data. The decision extends Carpenter v. United States, 585 U.S. 296 (2018), and rejects the argument that a short collection window or storage on a company’s servers strips the data of protection. The Congressional Research Service has published a summary of the ruling and the case law leading to it.
Chatrie held that acquiring the data is a search. It did not order suppression, and the good faith exception remains available to the State. The holding still matters in Broward County for a structural reason. Article I, Section 12 of the Florida Constitution requires state courts to construe search and seizure protections in conformity with the Fourth Amendment as interpreted by the United States Supreme Court. Florida judges are bound to apply Chatrie, and a Fort Lauderdale domestic violence attorney should be examining how investigators obtained any location record in the file.
Preserve the Record Before It Disappears
The same evidence that supports an arrest frequently dismantles the allegation. Message threads show who initiated contact after a no contact order issued under Section 741.30. Timestamps place the accused somewhere else.
Keep in mind that deleted call logs can usually be recovered with a court order. For those directly involved, the instinct to erase a phone thread may be tempting, but it is often the single most damaging thing a person can act on. Deletion invites an argument of consciousness of guilt. Furthermore, it could possibly support a separate charge for tampering with evidence under Section 918.13, a third degree felony punishable by up to five years in prison.
Anyone arrested in Broward County should preserve every device untouched and consult a Fort Lauderdale domestic violence attorney immediately. Carriers and cloud providers purge records on their own schedules, often within weeks. It may be possible that a subpoena issued after that window closes returns nothing. You, however, should call a criminal defense attorney as soon as possible.
Call Fort Lauderdale Criminal Defense Attorney Richard Ansara at (954) 761-4011. Serving Broward County.
More Blog Entries:
HB 277 and the Surge in Electronic Monitoring: What Domestic Violence Defendants Need to Know, March 20, 2026, Fort Lauderdale Criminal Defense Lawyer Blog
