Supreme Court Clarifies Admissibility of Photocopies as Evidence

A debate over the admissibility of photocopies as evidence has emerged during the ongoing impeachment trial at the Philippine Senate, following an objection raised by the defense regarding the presentation of digital evidence. The objection centered on printouts used to authenticate an online video related to Vice President Sara Duterte, with the defense arguing they were mere photocopies and not the original digital data. During the impeachment trial on July 7, National Bureau of Investigation Senior Agent John Mark Calilung detailed the process he used to preserve and verify the video of Vice President Duterte's November 2024 Zoom press conference, where she allegedly said she had hired an assassin to kill President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and his family. Calilung explained that his digital forensic process involved filing a preservation request with Meta, capturing a screen recording and creating a unique hash value to ensure the file remained untampered with before it was presented in court. To prove the video's authenticity, House prosecution lawyer Amando Virgil Ligutan introduced a certified copy of Calilung's affidavit alongside printed screenshots of the Meta request. However, defense lawyer Carlo Narvasa objected to the submission, arguing that the prosecution was using mere photocopies instead of the original electronic data, while also pointing out that the physical USB drive or CD mentioned in the annexes was missing. The impeachment court overruled the objection and allowed the preliminary marking of the documents, clarifying that accurate printouts of digital files are legally admissible as originals. With that said, are photocopies of documents admissible as evidence in court? The Supreme Court, in the case of People v. Lastimosa, promulgated in February 2025, said they are admissible. According to the high court, a photocopy or a "duplicate," defined as a counterpart produced by photography or other equivalent techniques that accurately reproduce the original, is admissible to the same extent as the original. However, there are conditions for its admissibility. According to the Supreme Court, a photocopied document is admissible unless: (1) A genuine question is raised as to the authenticity of the original. (2) Under the circumstances, it would be unjust or inequitable to admit the duplicate in lieu of the original. The 2019 Revised Rules on Evidence provide that under the original document rule, when the contents of a writing, recording or photograph are at issue, the original document must generally be presented to prove those contents. However, there are exceptions: (a) When the original is lost or destroyed, or cannot be produced in court, without bad faith on the part of the offeror. (b) When the original is in the custody or under the control of the party against whom the evidence is offered, and the latter fails to produce it after reasonable notice, or the original cannot be obtained through local judicial processes or procedures. (c) When the original consists of numerous accounts or other documents that cannot be examined in court without great loss of time, and the fact sought to be established is only the general result of the whole. (d) When the original is a public record in the custody of a public officer or is recorded in a public office. (e) When the original is not closely related to a controlling issue. In the case, the high court, citing the 2019 Revised Rules on Evidence, defined what constitutes an original and a duplicate document. An original document is defined under the rules as follows: (a) An "original" of a document is the document itself or any counterpart intended to have the same effect by the person executing or issuing it. An "original" of a photograph includes the negative or any print made from it. If data is stored in a computer or similar device, any printout or other output readable by sight or other means, shown to accurately reflect the data, is considered an "original." Meanwhile, a duplicate document is defined as follows: (b) A "duplicate" is a counterpart produced by the same impression as the original, or from the same matrix, or by means of photography, including enlargements and miniatures, or by mechanical or electronic rerecording, or by chemical reproduction, or by other equivalent techniques that accurately reproduce the original.