Commonwealth v. Rivera

A jury convicted the defendant, Osmany Rivera, of one count of assault and battery.2 On this direct appeal he contends the trial judge erred in admitting recordings of 911 calls from the victim and in not declaring a mistrial after a police officer testified to prior bad acts. We affirm.

1. Authentication of the 911 calls. The defendant contends that the Commonwealth did not properly authenticate two recordings of 911 calls alleged to have come from the victim. We disagree.

Authentication "usually takes the form of testimony of a qualified witness either (1) that the thing is what its proponent…