Instructor: Jonathan Holbrook,

Jonathan Holbrook joined the UNC Chapel Hill School of Government in 2017 as the School’s first-ever Prosecutor Educator. Jonathan previously worked as a prosecutor for nearly ten years, both in state court with the Wake County District Attorney’s Office and in federal court with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of North Carolina. Jonathan earned his B.A. from Northwestern University, and his J.D. with Honors from UNC Chapel Hill School of Law. Jonathan writes and updates legal entries for NC PRO, the new online criminal procedure resource for North Carolina prosecutors, as well as the NC Criminal Law Blog, and he provides assistance, consultation, and training to prosecutors on a wide variety of issues.

Session Description: 

Threatening messages, damaging admissions, incriminating photos – prosecutors know how valuable social media evidence can be in a criminal trial. But as the technology advances and new platforms emerge, it’s not always clear what the requirements are for authenticating and admitting this type of evidence. This presentation offers a simple framework for approaching all social media evidence based on how and where it was obtained, whether found online or downloaded from a server, and then works through the best answers to the most common defense objections to admitting the evidence. This presentation also discusses relevant Virginia case law and applies the rules and arguments in context to illustrate how this approach is applied successfully to each type of evidence.

This webinar is open to Virginia prosecutors.

Click here to register by 5pm February 10, 2021