As a criminal defense attorney in Fort Lauderdale, I periodically have clients arrested for driving under the influence or possession of drugs who ask me, “Can the police testify in court about the results of a radar gun to show the speed of my vehicle or in a Caller ID screen to prove I made a phone call? … Shouldn’t this evidence be considered an inadmissible rumor? “According to Bowe v. Condition, 785 So.2d 531 (Fla. 4th DCA, 2001), radar gun readings and caller ID displays are not considered inadmissible rumors and the police may (and routinely) present this type of evidence in the cut.

The Florida Code of Evidence (90.801 (1) (c)) defines hearsay as an extrajudicial statement from a “declarant” offered to prove the truth of the asserted matter. A declarant is a “person” who makes a declaration. Therefore, only statements made by people fall within the definition of hearsay. This distinction is crucial in determining which testimony is considered inadmissible hearsay.

Police officers often rely on radar gun readings to test a person’s travel speed in courtroom proceedings for driving under the influence. Surprisingly, radar guns do not produce paper prints for police officers to enter into evidence. Instead, police officers testify in court about what the radar gun recorded to test an individual’s speed.

Similarly, police officers occasionally rely on caller ID screens to demonstrate a person’s knowledge or involvement in a crime. For example, a police officer may testify in court that a reading of the caller ID of the phone number assigned to an individual on an undercover police officer’s cell phone corroborates that the individual was conspiring with the undercover police officer to sell or buy drugs. Police officers also rely on caller ID screens in cases of domestic violence, stalking, and assault.

In both cases, the courts have held that neither radar gun readings nor caller ID displays are considered rumors because of their designation as machines, and not as “persons”, capable of being testimony within the definition of rumors. Importantly, these statements (i.e. actual radar readings) are not human generated. Rather, human-generated out-of-court statements (i.e. email chains) offered to prove the truth of the asserted matter are considered hearsay. For example, a witness testifying about statements they read from an email would be considered a rumor, since the email was generated by a person, not a machine.

The main justification for the hearsay rule is to give the defender the opportunity to cross-examine a disqualifier who made an out-of-court statement offered to prove the veracity of the asserted matter. Remembering that one does not interrogate a machine; one examines the person who operated or maintained the machine. In cases involving a radar gun reading or caller ID screen, the information entered is limited to machine-generated numbers, not people. Furthermore, this information cannot be influenced or manipulated by other people. As a result, the appropriate remedy to contest evidence is to: attack the reliability of declarant’s statements (ie, a declarant may have a reason to lie to bolster his case or justify an arrest); highlighting that the declarant may have misread or incorrectly transcribed the numbers; attack the reliability of the machine, if applicable; attack the declarant’s ability to read / understand the results of the machine (that is, a complicated program to interpret the retinal scans); or questioning the relevance of the evidence.

Since nothing can be more damning evidence at trial than a radar gun reading or caller ID screen, it is important to immediately contact an experienced criminal defense attorney to review such evidence and attack its admissibility or weight at trial.

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