Meta won’t have to turn over user messages in Oregon murder case

SALEM, Ore. (CN) — Meta won’t have to turn over internal user messages in an Oregon homicide case, Oregon’s highest court ruled Friday, rejecting an appeal from a criminal defendant who argued that refusal to produce the records violated his state and federal constitutional rights.

The court declined to issue a writ of mandamus that would have directed a lower court to order Meta to produce records related to the social media accounts of two individuals involved in a 2024 shooting on the outskirts of Salem.

“The mandamus petition in this case raises important issues of state and federal statutory and constitutional law arising pretrial during an ongoing criminal prosecution on serious charges, including a charge of second-degree murder,” the court wrote in a per curiam opinion. “However, upon consideration, the court declines to issue a peremptory writ of mandamus on this record at this time.”

Prosecutors say David Ayon-Urbano fatally shot Hector de Jesus Gonzalez Mendoza in June 2024. Both were teenagers at the time of the shooting, and two teenage girls witnessed the shooting.

Ayon-Urbano is seeking geolocation data, messages and call information from Meta that relates to the social media accounts of Gonzalez Mendoza and one of the witnesses — records he argues are crucial to his defense. Should he be convicted of second-degree murder, Ayon-Urbano faces a potential life sentence.

In a six-page decision, the court found that Ayon-Urbano’s concerns that the information could be destroyed did not satisfy a “special loss” requirement that could have forced Meta to turn over the records.  Meta said it would preserve the challenged records until the final resolution of the case, and that the court would hold the company to that commitment, the justices noted.

“We are not persuaded that relator has established a ‘special loss’ at this point in the proceeding to justify the exercise of our discretion to resolve the issues raised in his mandamus petition,” they said. Still, the justices said their decision to deny the petition would not affect Ayon-Urbano’s rights to file future requests.

All seven justices except Justice Christopher L. Garrett participated in the decision.

Representatives for Meta or Ayon-Urbano did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In a statement to Courthouse News, Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield commended the court’s ruling.

“The Supreme Court sided with Oregon, agreeing that the key constitutional questions in this case weren’t properly before them,” he said. “If and when those questions do come before the court, we’ll keep fighting to protect crime victims and trauma survivors from having their most private information exposed unnecessarily in court.”

During oral arguments on May 5, Rian Peck, a defense attorney with the firm Visible Law, argued the Instagram messages and records Ayon-Urbano is seeking are pivotal to his defense.

While the defense team has access to two phones — one owned by Gonzalez Mendoza and another by one of the teenage witnesses — it is seeking records and data relating to four Instagram accounts that it says it cannot fully access without assistance from Meta.

Ayon-Urbano and Gonzalez Mendoza were reportedly members of rival gangs, and at the time of the killing, Ayon-Urbano was reportedly mourning the loss of a friend killed by the rival gang.

According to the defense’s theory, Gonzalez Mendoza colluded with one of the teenage girls to arrange a surprise encounter with Ayon-Urbano, which resulted in Gonzalez Mendoza’s death. Messages from the teenage girl and Gonzalez Mendoza’s Instagram accounts could support this theory, Peck has argued.

But a trial court quashed the subpoena, concluding that the federal Stored Communications Act barred Ayon-Urbano from accessing electronic communications from Meta.

Governmental authorities, on the other hand, are able to make such requests. Ayon-Urbano appealed to the state supreme court, arguing that such a conclusion violated his right to due process under both the state and federal constitutions.

“This is about a constitutional right,” Peck said. “Relator either has it or he doesn’t, and it applies pretrial and allows him to investigate and prepare his defense so he can have a complete defense in this case.”

However, Meta argued that Ayon-Urbano’s request was an attempt to conduct searches and seizures on equal footing with the government. The company also said that the Stored Communications Act prevents it from sharing information of the kind the defense is seeking without the consent of the account holders.

Leigh Salmon with the Oregon Department of Justice argued that the appeal was premature and that Ayon-Urbano had not demonstrated any irretrievable loss of information.

“We assume that there are communications because we do know that the witness and the victim communicated via Instagram,” she said. “But the idea that this information [and] the contents of those communications are material to the defense is entirely speculative at this point.”

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