Defendant Claimed Video of Abuse Was a “Deepfake”; Victim Was Asleep and Could Not Attest to Abuse

After an alleged “deepfake” video of a sexual assault was admitted over objection, the Defendant appealed his conviction.  The Supreme Court of Iowa wrote: “In this sexual abuse case, we are asked to decide whether the district court erred in admitting a video. The video graphically shows the defendant abusing the victim. However, there was no chain-of-custody evidence connecting the video to the defendant. The victim was asleep at the time and could not personally attest to the abuse shown in the video. And the defendant claimed ‘deepfake.’”  State of Iowa v. Amyda, __ N.W.2d __, 2026 WL 3030750 (Sup. Ct. Iowa Oct. 9, 2026).

A conclusory and unsupported “deepfake” assertion did not overcome circumstantial authentication evidence to the contrary.

The appellate court affirmed the conviction.  While the court’s decision is explicit, I have chosen to omit some facts with a notation [… Intimate Facts Omitted…].

The video came to the victim’s attention about a month after the defendant had been in the victim’s bedroom. The video appears to be taken by the perpetrator of the abuse at close range using a cellphone. It shows the victim sleeping, but she testified in detail that she recognized her bedroom, her bed and furnishings, the clothing she had been wearing, her legs [… Intimate Facts Omitted…], and the defendant’s tattooed hand—all as they had been that evening. Collectively, these circumstances were enough to admit the video. And the defendant’s mere speculation that the video was a deepfake was not enough to bar its admission.

Id. at *1 (emphasis added).

Skipping over some facts, the victim, Clara, got together with her friend’s uncle, the Defendant Amyda.  She knew him and  believed she could trust him.  They drank a bottle of rum, but when he said that he wanted to have sex with her, she refused.  “Clara, fully clothed but having consumed a lot of alcohol, fell asleep.” Id.  When she awoke the next day, “everything seemed fine.”  Defendant Amyda was still there, but left.

About a month later, Clara’s sister forwarded a video to her. It showed her being abused. Id. at *1.  When Clara tried to contact him, he blocked her.  She pressed charges. The police tried to interview Amyda—he agreed to meet but repeatedly failed to appear.

At that point, Officer Hansen decided to have Amyda arrested. Yet Officer Hansen never obtained a search warrant for Amyda’s electronic devices. Officer Hansen explained that Amyda did not have his cellphone on his person at the time of his arrest. Officer Hansen also was unable to retrace the digital footprint of the video.

Id. at *2 (emphasis added).

The court wrote: “When Amyda was arrested, his left hand had a different tattoo from the one shown in the video. But a tattoo artist who examined a booking photo of the hand testified at trial. According to his testimony, the tattoo appeared to have been freshly applied within the last eight to twelve days.”  Id. at *2.  For another case in which a suspect tried to change his appearance before trial, see Suspect’s Haircut = Destruction or Concealment of Evidence Leading to “Missing Evidence” Jury Instruction (Aug. 13, 2022).

Defendant Amyda filed a pretrial motion in limine to bar the video.  “Amyda argued that the video was not properly authenticated, was vulnerable to ‘deepfake’ technology, and furthermore was not admissible under the best-evidence rule because it was a copy and not the original. The State resisted.”  Id.

The district court held a pretrial evidentiary hearing. There Clara testified that she recognized the room depicted in the video as her bedroom. She identified her bed, her blanket, her pillowcases, and the top that she had been wearing on May 5. [… Intimate Facts Omitted…] Overall, she confirmed that her appearance in the video matched how she would have looked on the night of May 5. She also recognized the hand appearing in the video as Amyda’s based on the tattoo, scars, and other features. At the conclusion of the hearing, the district court issued a detailed ruling denying Amyda’s motion in limine.

On August 13, 2024, the case went to trial. When the State sought to introduce the video into evidence, Amyda renewed his objections. They were again overruled. On August 16, the jury returned a verdict finding Amyda guilty.

Id. at *2.

The intermediate appellate court affirmed, holding that there was sufficient circumstantial evidence to authenticate the video.  It pointed to “a showing with the victim’s detailed testimony that she recognized her body, her partial clothing, the room, and Amyda’s hand—all consistent with the only time that he was in her room in early May 2023.”  Id. at *2.  It rejected the “deepfake” challenge, writing:

So too was the [trial] court within its discretion to reject Amyda’s best-evidence challenge. Assuming the rule applies to this video and that the video is not an original, it was still admissible as a duplicate because Amyda’s speculative claims that the video was a “deepfake” without any evidentiary support did not raise a genuine question about the video’s authenticity.

Id. at *3 (emphasis added).

The Supreme Court of Iowa agreed. A video may be authenticated by its “appearance, contents, substance, internal patterns, or other distinctive characteristics of the item, taken together with all the circumstances.”  Id. at *3. The court noted that a video may be authenticated “even though no one could directly confirm its accuracy or testify as to how it was taken….  The harder cases are those in which direct testimony is not available and the proponent must rely on circumstances to lay a foundation for admission….  This, of course, was one of the ‘harder cases.’”  Id. at *3 (cleaned up).  In short, circumstantial evidence may be sufficient to authenticate a video.

Here, that test was met:

The video appears to be taken with a cellphone held in the right hand of the person whose left hand is visible committing sexual abuse. Clara had communicated with Amyda by messaging him that evening; presumably, he would have brought his cellphone to their encounter. Also, Clara fell asleep in her bedroom with Amyda after they both had been drinking; the video shows her face and closed eyes as she is sleeping soundly. Further, Clara identified Amyda’s tattooed hand, her bedroom, her bed and pillows, her clothing, and her legs [… Intimate Facts Omitted…] in the video. Indeed, the only thing in the video that Clara couldn’t personally verify was the abuse itself. Moreover, the video surfaced a little over a month after May 5, and when Clara tried to communicate with Amyda about it, he blocked her.[1]

Rejecting Defendant’s argument that this was legally insufficient, the court wrote:  “But the circumstantial evidence here went beyond just the distinctive characteristics of items in a video. Furthermore, the distinctive characteristics here ranged from the private (Clara’s bedroom) to the shockingly private [… Intimate Facts Omitted…].  What third-party fabricator would have access to all that?”  Id. at *5.

The Iowa court cited Mooney v. State, 487 Md. 701, 321 A.3d 91, 107 (2024), which I discussed in Can a witness authenticate a video if the video contains images that the witness did not see? (Aug. 16, 2024).

It also cited other precedent that: “Defendant’s allusions to the possibility the videos could be altered are not backed by any evidence in the record nor does Defendant make any specific claim to such effect.” Id. at *6.  However, it explained: “We are not oblivious to the risks of video evidence. Like the New York Court of Appeals, we recognize that ‘most fabricated videos ‘leverage’ real details from real photos and videos of real places and people, then alter the pieces the person wishes to alter to create a realistic, but manipulated, video.’ … But here, by contrast, there are no identifiable circumstances to suggest that the video might be a deepfake.”  Id. at *6 (emphasis added).

The video was a version that had been sent to the victim.  The court also rejected a “best evidence” challenge:

Much of the closing argument made by Amyda’s counsel urged the jury to conclude that the video was a deepfake. Yet his advocacy rested on popular culture rather than any of the evidence in the case. The closing argument began, “Is it fake? Is it real? Ladies and gentlemen, we live in the age of artificial intelligence.” It continued, “In this state of artificial intelligence, people can manipulate a video to look like whatever they want to look — they want it to look like.” Amyda’s counsel proceeded to refer to various news stories about celebrities and other people who had been the subject of deepfake videos, including deepfake pornography.

 But apart from trying to cash in on the so-called “liar’s dividend,”[2] Amyda’s counsel had little to work with. The prosecutor countered as follows in her rebuttal argument:

So when [defense counsel] is wa[ ]ving around articles and talking about deepfake porn, that is not evidence, ladies and gentlemen. That is not evidence. What is evidence is what you heard from that stand.

Fake video, imagine someone to make a fake video in this matter would have to know, as [Clara] described, the intrinsic details of her body.

Unfortunately, we had to talk a lot about private matters, right? They had her [… Intimate Facts Omitted…]  on her legs that she identified. [… Intimate Facts Omitted…]  They had stubble on her legs. They had her hair positioned as such.

They had her exact clothing that she would have been wearing the night she was with the defendant, and even more so, [… Intimate Facts Omitted…]. They would have to know all those intrinsic details to make up this video. Who would know that?

The “best evidence” objection was overruled.

Interestingly, the Iowa court held that its rules operated similarly to proposed Fed.R.Evid. 901(c).

This rule would provide that “a party challenging the authenticity of an item of evidence on the ground that it has been fabricated, in whole or in part, by generative artificial intelligence … must present evidence sufficient to support a finding of fabrication to warrant an inquiry by the court.” … At that point the proponent would have to demonstrate to the court that the item “is more likely than not authentic.”

Id. at *7-8 (emphasis added).  “[T]o block its admission under rule 5.1003, Amyda had the initial burden to raise a genuine question about the authenticity of the original. He failed to do so.”  Id. at *8.

For a deep evidentiary dive into debunking a “deepfake” audio, see A Deep Dive Into the Pikesville, MD, Racist/Antisemitic Deepfake Audio (Jul. 21, 2026).

For another case rejecting a “deepfake” assertion, see Evidence Sufficient to Demonstrate that Audio Recording Was Not a Deepfake (Mar. 23, 2026).

The National Center on State Courts has published guidance: Deepfakes – National Center for State Courts (Mar. 6, 2026).

See generally:

• Phil Favro Discusses Deepfakes and Authentication (Sep. 3, 2026);
• Deepfake Photos Admitted – Proponent Held in Contempt – 45-Day Incarceration (Jun. 2, 2026);
• ai “Transcript” Was Excluded From Consideration (Apr. 25, 2026);
• Suggested A.I. Rule – Suggested Amendment to Maryland’s Computer-Generated Evidence Rule (Apr. 2, 2026);
• Authentication of Surveillance Video by Lay Witness Under Silent Witness Doctrine (Dec. 9, 2024).

This blog was initially posted on  Electronic Discovery Reference Model.

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[1] For a decision admitting “unfriending” evidence, see “Unfriending” Evidence – Maryland Follows “Reasonable Juror” Standard in Authentication of Social Media (May 12, 2020).

[2] “The term ‘liar’s dividend’ refers to the possibility that public awareness of deepfakes will make it easier to raise doubts about legitimate evidence.”  The court cited Bobby Chesney & Danielle Citron, “Deep Fakes: A Looming Challenge for Privacy, Democracy, and National Security,” 107 Cal. L. Rev. 1753, 1785–86 (2019) (“[A] skeptical public will be primed to doubt the authenticity of real audio and video evidence. This skepticism can be invoked just as well against authentic as against adulterated content.”).