Abstract

Emojis have been appearing more and more frequently in court cases since at least 2015, used as evidence for or against intent to commit a crime or as signs of a defendant’s consciousness of guilt. They have also become part of an ever-expanding visual lexicon of aggression used by individuals and gangs for making threats or planning criminal activities. This essay surveys relevant cases and studies since 2015 that concern this aspect of emoji communication—an aspect that was hardly anticipated by the congeners of these picture words, who introduced them as communicative tools to foster benign interactions in the global village, not as weapons of violence and criminality. The main conclusions that can be extrapolated from the present review are as follows: emojis can, in fact, no longer be viewed merely as signs designed to engender congenial communication, as was intended by their inventors; they can no longer be excluded as evidence in courtrooms, given their penetration into everyday digital communications; and they require special attention by both legal and criminal investigative practices and institutions. The last point implies the need for a field that can be called simply “emoji forensics.”