Commonwealth v. Amaral

In this case, we examine the efforts of the law to keep abreast of technological advances. More specifically, the issue is whether the Commonwealth’s documentary evidence was sufficient to tie the defendant to an undercover officer posing as a fifteen year old prostitute. The primary documentary evidence against the defendant consisted of (1) a printed copy of an electronic document provided by Yahoo! Inc. (Yahoo), an Internet service provider, linking him to a Yahoo account; and *672(2) electronic mail (e-mail) correspondence allegedly between him and the officer. Fatal to the defendant were the…