Background
In January 2023, a Vermont family division court issued a temporary relief-from-abuse (RFA) order against Jeremy Amidon, directing him to stay away from the complainant and her children and prohibiting all contact — direct, indirect, or through third parties — by any means including electronic communication. On February 10, 2023, the same day the final RFA hearing was held, Amidon sent a message through a Facebook Messenger account to the complainant’s friend that read: “You can tell that slam pig [complainant’s first name] thanks for the RFA and she will regret it.” The State charged Amidon with violating the temporary RFA order under 13 V.S.A. § 1030(a).
The case proceeded to a jury trial in August 2024. The State’s evidence included testimony from two police officers (one of whom had personally served Amidon with the temporary order), the complainant’s friend (the message recipient), and the complainant herself. The complainant’s friend testified that he identified the Messenger account as Amidon’s because he had previously used that same account to arrange in-person meetings with Amidon, had confirmed the account holder’s identity by asking for the names of Amidon’s five children — a question the account holder answered correctly — and recognized an unusual term (“slam pig”) that he had previously heard Amidon use. A screenshot printout of the message was admitted as Exhibit 5 over Amidon’s authentication objection.
After the State rested, Amidon moved for judgment of acquittal, arguing that the State failed to prove he authored the message and had not properly authenticated Exhibit 5. The trial court denied the motion. Amidon presented no evidence, and the jury returned a guilty verdict. He appealed to the Vermont Supreme Court.
The Court’s Holding
A three-justice panel of the Vermont Supreme Court affirmed the conviction, holding that the evidence was sufficient for the jury to find beyond a reasonable doubt that Amidon authored the Messenger message. Viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the State under the standard of State v. Cameron, 2016 VT 134, the court found that multiple converging facts — the recipient’s prior in-person meetings arranged through the same account, the identity-verification exchange about Amidon’s five children, the use of the distinctive term “slam pig,” the explicit reference to the complainant and the RFA proceedings, and the timing of the message on the day of the final RFA hearing — collectively supported the jury’s conclusion.
The court rejected Amidon’s reliance on State v. Allcock, 2020 VT 60, which had held that social media evidence requires authentication showing the account is what the proponent claims. The court distinguished Allcock — where the State offered only account name registration and bare police conclusions — by noting that here the State called the actual message recipient, who provided detailed, firsthand reasons for believing the account belonged to Amidon, including a successful identity-verification exchange and a history of coordinating real-world meetings through the same account. That evidence was deemed “significantly stronger” than what was presented in Allcock.
The court further noted that, under State v. Jones, 2008 VT 67, circumstantial evidence must be considered as a whole rather than piece by piece. Additional corroboration came from Exhibit 5 itself — which showed the parties arranging a meeting after the offensive message — and from both witnesses’ testimony that Amidon kept his phone password-protected and was possessive of his devices, making it unlikely that another person sent the message from his account.
Key Takeaways
- An abuse-prevention order’s prohibition on third-party contact is violated when a defendant uses a social media messenger account to send a hostile message about the protected person to her friend, even without directly contacting her.
- Digital messages from social media accounts can be sufficiently authenticated under Vermont Rule of Evidence 901 and Allcock when the recipient testifies from personal experience about why they believe the account belongs to the defendant — including prior coordinated meetings and identity-verification exchanges — without needing a subpoena for IP address data or official account records.
- Circumstantial evidence of message authorship must be evaluated in its totality; individually explainable facts may collectively establish guilt beyond a reasonable doubt under State v. Jones.
- This decision is an unpublished entry order from a three-justice panel and carries no precedential weight before any Vermont tribunal.
Why It Matters
The decision illustrates the practical evidentiary threshold Vermont courts apply when the State seeks to attribute social media or messaging-app communications to a defendant in a criminal case. For prosecutors and defense attorneys, Amidon demonstrates how Allcock’s authentication requirements can be satisfied through recipient testimony grounded in a documented history of communications and identity confirmation — without resort to technical evidence such as IP address logs. The case is a useful data point for litigants navigating digital evidence in domestic violence prosecutions.
For defendants subject to abuse-prevention orders, the case underscores that routing a hostile message through a mutual acquaintance does not insulate conduct from criminal liability: the order’s explicit prohibition on indirect and third-party contact was the basis for the charge, and the jury’s finding that the defendant was the message’s author was upheld on the strength of circumstantial evidence alone.