Digital evidence in Vietnamese criminal proceedings: Legal framework and adjudicative practice

Resumen

This article examines the Vietnamese legal framework on electronic evidence under the 2015 Criminal Procedure Code (CPC 2015) and its application in adjudication by analyzing the theory of admissibility of evidence and the chain-of-custody doctrine and systematically reviewing of twenty criminal judgments delivered by Vietnamese courts between 2017 and 2025. It advances three arguments. Firstly, the conception of electronic evidence in the CPC 2015 is established, but the Code contains no codified requirement of a chain of custody for electronic data, and none of the twenty judgments articulates any basis for the authenticity or integrity of that data beyond the defendant’s admissions. Secondly, electronic evidence now operates well beyond the high-technology offences on which practice and scholarship initially focused, appearing routinely in ordinary criminal cases. Finally, the Law on Personal Data Protection 2025 exempts criminal investigations from the consent requirement but delegates the applicable conditions to procedural law, where none currently exist - a gap that Vietnam’s ratification of the United Nations Convention against Cybercrime in April 2026 now obliges it to close. The article proposes six reforms, focusing on procedural codification, chain-of-custody rules and cross-border access to data.