Judges Struggling To Understand And Interpret Emoji And Emoticons In Court Cases

Prosecutors of Bay Area were making efforts in proving a man guilty of pimping. Among their evidence, there was a series of direct messages on Instagram that he had sent to a woman. One of the messages read, “Teamwork make the dream work.” At the end of the DM are high heels and money bag emoticon. Prosecutors said that the message indicated that between the man and the woman, there was a working relationship while the defendant said it could only mean the man was trying to initiate a romantic move. So who was right?

Emoticons and emoji are appearing more and more in court cases. Although they have not become a deciding factor for any cases, law professor Eric Goldman at Santa Clara University believes they will have a tremendous role in the near future, which is why the courts need to prepare themselves.

Goldman said in an interview that:

He has been tracking the times that the words “emotions” or “emoji” show up in numerous court databases in the U.S. The result has shown 171 cases in 2004, 33 cases since 2017, and 53 ones in 2018.

These cases rarely regard the use of emoticons or emoji. For example, when they read the text transcripts out loud for the juries, the judges even decided to say “emoji omitted.”

But Goldman claims that the courts have to realize the importance of these icons in forming the meaning of our communications and make an attempt in interpreting them.

He said:

The different appearance of these symbols on each device also needs to be taken into consideration.

Eventually, the need to be able to understand and interpret these little icons could lead to the possibility of a new job in the legal field: regional emoji expert.

According to Goldman’s explanation: