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“That's How She Talks”: Animating Text Message Evidence in the Sexual Assault Trial

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Heather R. Hlavka  and
Sameena Mulla
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Abstract

This ethnographic study of criminal sexual assault adjudication shows how prosecutors, defense attorneys, and witnesses animate text message evidence. In contrast to other forms of courtroom testimony, text messages function as multiauthored representations of recorded correspondence in the past. Attorneys and witnesses animate texts authored by or said to characterize persons represented at trial. By whom and how the texts are animated shapes trial processes. Through a detailed comparative case analysis of two Milwaukee, WI, sexual assault trials, this article attends to the process by which text messages are said to personify or characterize authors’ meaning and intent. This animation of electronically transmitted text speaks to credibility and variably emphasizes a witness's place within gendered and racialized cultural norms. Rather than unsettling the trope of “he said, she said,” text messages become contested evidence animated by court actors within contexts of long-standing cultural narratives of sexual victimization and offending.

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Articles
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 52 , Issue 2 , June 2018 , pp. 401 - 435
Copyright
© 2018 Law and Society Association.

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Footnotes

The authors gratefully acknowledge financial support from the National Science Foundation, Program for Law and Social Sciences (Grant number: 1250606) and a Marquette University Regular Research Grant. Human Subjects Protocols were filed with Marquette University's Office of Research Compliance under protocol numbers 2224 and 2373.

The title is taken from a direct quote of a witness who stated, “that's how she talks” when explaining the tone and context of text messages exchanged between himself and a victim-witness. Witnesses of all genders are examined in this article, and the cultural norms through which courts make sense of the texts discussed in this research are highly dependent on gender and race.

Heather R. Hlavka and Sameena Mulla have contributed equally to this work.

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