Has anyone fought the battle of offering PDF's of certified priors as self-authenticating? Harris County is emailing us certified priors, rather than mailing. Anyone know of any case law on this? All I have found in a quick search was a faxed copy that was not admissible...from 1997 case. Help!

The argument goes like this: the document you are offering bears a seal purporting to be that of a department/agency/officer of a political subdivision of the State of Texas and a signature purporting to be an execution or attestation and thus requires no extrinsic evidence of authenticity to be admitted. Tex. R. Evid. 902(1). The document contains the certification in a form meeting Tex. R. Evid. 902(4). An original certification is unnecessary under Tex. R. Evid. 901(b)(7), as the certificate alone supports a finding that the item is what you claim it to be. Tex. R. Evid. 901(a). Tex. R. Evid. 102 does not lend itself to any other interpretation. Englund, 946 S.W.2d 64, 71 certainly supports this claim. See also Ford, No. 07-11-00207-CR (5/15/13).

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Martin Peterson,

If a fax of a certified document is ok, a pdf is ok, seems to me. See Englund v. State, 946 S.W.2d 64 (Tex. Crim. App. 1997).

Thanks for the input--sounds like we are good. This sure makes life easier!

Let us know what your trial court does. Electronic documents are the future, and other counties are being dragged into this by their commissioners and others. We need to know your experience.

My judge has everything that has been filed with the clerk on her desktop at the bench with her. In other words, she has a virtual folder of everything on file right there. We haven't had any push back with her taking judicial notice of what's in that virtual file, even on Motions to Revoke where there might be a lot of previously submitted evidence that has been scanned. In a county where we often fight with the defense bar over minutia, no one seems all that interested in forcing us to walk down the hall and obtaining a certified copy of what is already on the judge's monitor.