As an amateur genealogist, my questions are -
Is a newspaper article a legal document that could be presented as proof of birth in a court of law?
No, a newspaper article can be corroborating evidence only and is usually considered hearsay. There are exceptions and a judge can rule an article to be admissible as evidence.
“Often, when offered to prove that certain statements were
made, newspaper and magazine articles are held inadmissible as hearsay. However, Federal Rule of Evidence 803(24), the “residual” or “catch-all” exception to the hearsay rule, provides a mechanism by which they may sometimes be admitted. The section reads, in pertinent part, as follows:
The following are not excluded by the hearsay rule,
even though the declarant is available as a witness:
....
(24) Other exceptions. A statement not specifically
covered by any of the foregoing exceptions but having
equivalent circumstantial guarantees of trustworthiness,
if the court determines that (A) the statement is offered
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as evidence of a material fact; (B) the statement is
more probative on the point for which it is offered than
any other evidence which the proponent can procure
through reasonable efforts; and (C) the general purposes
of these rules and the interests of justice will best be
served by admission of the statement into evidence.
Fed. R. Evid. 803(24
The legislative history of this rule indicates that it should be applied sparingly. But the trial court has broad discretion in assessing the probity and trustworthiness of evidence.
Although Rule 803(24) lists probativity and trustworthiness as separate requirements, the two requirements must be considered as linked. In essence, the task of the Court, in assessing whether a certain piece of evidence may be admitted under 803(24), is to balance the need for the evidence, in light of other available evidence, against its trustworthiness, assessed in light of the surrounding circumstances.
Courts have been willing to admit hearsay evidence under 803(24) when the declarant is available and subject to cross-examination and the hearsay statement in question was not the product of faulty perception, memory or meaning, the dangers against which the hearsay rule seeks to guard.
Why is no hospital in Hawaii claiming that Obama was born in their facility?
Since the implementation of HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) in 2003, a hospital could be fined up to $250,000 for releasing confidential health information without the person named on the document’s permission.
“Why doesn’t the Hawaii DOH confirm that the COLB posted on the internet was indeed issued from their office?”
Because a scanned image of a document is not within their authority to confirm or deny. However the Director of Communications for the Hawaii Department of Health did respond to that point in an article published in the Washington Independent newspaper:
Janice Okubo of the Hawaii Department of Health quoted by the Washington Independent on July 17, 2009: “Ironically, the ‘birther’ movement began in response to Obama’s own efforts to debunk rumors. One year ago this week, the presidential campaign of then-Sen. Barack Obama launched FightTheSmears.com, a web site designed to push back against false rumors about the first African-American presidential nominee. To push back against rumors that he was not born in Hawaii, the campaign reproduced a Certificate of Live Birth from the state’s Health Department. Instead of terminating the conspiracy theories, that inspired new theories — that the certificate had been forged or that even if it hadn’t been forged it was the sort of certificate that could be given to someone born outside of the United States. But the certificate is specific about Obama’s birth in Honolulu, down to the 7:24 p.m. time.
‘It’s crazy,’ said Janice Okubo, director of communications for the Hawaii Department of Health. ‘I don’t think anything is ever going to satisfy them.’”
Okubo, who said that she gets weekly questions from Obama ‘Birthers’ that are ‘more like threats,’ explained that the Certificate of Live Birth reproduced by Obama’s campaign should have debunked the conspiracy theories. ‘If you were born in Bali, for example,’ Okubo explained, ‘you could get a certificate from the state of Hawaii saying you were born in Bali. You could not get a certificate saying you were born in Honolulu. The state has to verify a fact like that for it to appear on the certificate. But it’s become very clear that it doesn’t matter what I say. The people who are questioning this bring up all these implausible scenarios. What if the physician lied? What if the state lied? It’s just become an urban legend at this point.’”
“If the COLB posted on the internet is proven to be a fake, why would Obama provide a fake birth record if he has an authentic one?”
A scanned image can be inaccurate without being forgery. Whoever did the actual scanning might need to address that question under cross examination. At any point in time, any newspaper/media reporter could ask Governor Lingle of Hawaii your questions but the Governor has only issued the following statement in a radio interview:
“You know, during the campaign of 2008, I was actually in the mainland campaigning for Senator McCain. This issue kept coming up so much in the campaign, and again I think it’s one of those issues that is simply a distraction from the more critical issues that are facing the country. And so I had my health director, who is a physician by background, go personally view the birth certificate in the birth records of the Department of Health, and we issued a news release at that time saying that the president was, in fact, born at Kapi’olani Hospital in Honolulu, Hawaii. And that’s just a fact. And yet people continue to call up and e-mail and want to make it an issue. And I think it’s, again, a horrible distraction for the country by those people who continue this. ... It’s been established. He was born here.”—Governor of Hawaii Linda Lingle (R)