State of Maine v. Larry F. Coston II, 215 A.3d 1285

Defendant Larry F. Coston II was tried by jury and convicted of Class C burglary for driving a friend to a convenience store where the friend broke in and stole cigarettes; Coston testified he did not know his friend’s intent.
While jailed after arrest, Coston made telephone calls that were recorded by the county jail’s contracted out-of-state telecommunications vendor; recordings are stored on the vendor’s servers and accessible via a password-protected website.
A jail administrator and a police officer testified about how inmate calls are recorded, preserved, and retrieved; inmates use assigned IDs and most calls are recorded (attorney calls and internal jail system excluded).
The police officer downloaded the recordings from the vendor’s website using secured credentials, testified he kept his username/password secure, and denied altering or deleting recordings.
Coston objected to admission of the recordings on foundation and tampering grounds and also argued they were not originals; the trial court admitted the recordings, the jury convicted, and the court sentenced Coston.

Issue	Plaintiff's Argument	Defendant's Argument	Held
Authenticity/admissibility of jail phone recordings	Recordings were authenticated by testimony about recording, storage, and retrieval procedures	Coston argued foundation was inadequate and possible tampering rendered recordings inadmissible	Court held foundation sufficient; absent evidence of tampering, recordings admissible and weight for jury to decide
Best-evidence/originals	Recordings not "originals" and thus inadmissible under best-evidence rule	State showed output accurately reflected recordings and presentation did not render audio inaccurate	Court rejected best-evidence objection; method of presentation acceptable and did not undermine accuracy

State v. Churchill, 32 A.3d 1026 (Me. 2011) (flexible, low-burden authentication standard for electronic evidence; questions about integrity generally go to weight)
State v. Berke, 992 A.2d 1290 (Me. 2010) (foundation for electronic recordings requires showing systematic creation and secure storage, but no particular storage process is mandatory)
United States v. Savarese, 686 F.3d 1 (1st Cir. 2012) (authentication does not require ruling out all possibilities inconsistent with authenticity)
State v. Legassie, 171 A.3d 589 (Me. 2017) (discussion of best-evidence rule and electronically stored information)
Asencio v. State, 244 So. 3d 294 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App. 2018) (affirming admission of jail phone recording where custodian described identification procedures and recording content corroborated identity)