Rules of Evidence in Getting a Voicemail Admitted in Minnesota Courts

It's Got to Be Relevant

The basic threshold for admitting a voicemail in Minnesota courts is relevance. If the voicemail you are trying to admit into evidence does not help to prove an important fact, it simply can't be admitted because it's not legally relevant. So if you're suing Bob for crashing your car, Bob's voicemail wishing his daughter "Happy Birthday" probably isn't going to be relevant to the case. On the other hand, if Bob left that voicemail while driving your car, it may be relevant to prove that he was distracted at the time he crashed the vehicle.

The Law Favors Admissibility

Once your voicemail has been deemed relevant, it is admissible under Minnesota rules, and the court interpretations of such rules support wide-breadth admissibility of relevant evidence. This means that if the court has deemed Bob's voicemail to be relevant to your lawsuit, Bob is going to have a very difficult time getting it excluded. Once admitted, Bob's voicemail can be used to help prove that he was acting negligently when he crashed your car.

The Recorded Voice Must Be Identified

Your next threshold to admitting a voicemail into evidence is proving that the recorded voice is who you say it is. Minnesota court rules state that voice recordings have to be "authenticated". In a typical case, this means that either the speaker himself or a third party familiar with the speaker -- but not otherwise involved in the case -- must identify the recorded voice before it can be admitted. Other ways of authenticating voice recordings are used as well. In your case against Bob, you may have his daughter testify as to the identity of the voice purported to be her father wishing her "Happy Birthday" at the time your car crashed.

Excluding Otherwise Relevant Evidence

Even relevant and admissible evidence can still be excluded. The court rules lay out a handful of instances in which an otherwise-admissible voicemail may be excluded from evidence. If the voicemail does more to prejudice the jury against a party than actually prove some fact, it may excluded. Particularly gory photographs in criminal and personal injury cases are often challenged on this basis. Or, if the voicemail is just another in a series of similar messages and lacks its own evidentiary merit, it may be excluded. For example, Bob may have called his daughter five times while in your car; but each individual voicemail may not have enough merit to be admissible.

Hearsay

Another reason for excluding a voice message is if it contains hearsay. For instance, let's say Bob's daughter called her mom and left a message that said, "Dad called at 2:30 and said 'Happy Birthday'". Such a message may be inadmissible as hearsay if you are trying to use it to prove that Bob said "Happy Birthday."

Another instance in which hearsay may rear its ugly head is if you don't have the actual recorded message. Trying to introduce a transcription of voicemail will likely trigger an immediate hearsay objection. This is because the written transcription purports to convey what the message said, rather than being the voice message itself. It is this extra level of interpretation -- "he said..." -- that makes it suspicious as evidence.

Hearsay rules are nuanced, and evidence is examined on a case-by-case basis to determine if it's excludable as hearsay, not hearsay at all or falls within one of the many exceptions to the hearsay rule.