An interesting new case out of Pennsylvania portends some real conflict ahead. When a Pennsylvania man was tried for murder, prosecutors created a Computer-Generated Animation (CGA) movie depicting their version of the murder. The short film was generated with software commonly used by animators and was based on actual forensic evidence offered at the trial. The defendant objected to the admissibility of the evidence and after being convicted by the jury, assigned this as error on appeal.

The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania disagreed and affirmed the conviction, stating:

Society has become increasingly dependent upon computers in business and in our personal lives. With each technological advancement, the practice of law becomes more sophisticated, and commensurate with this progress, the legal system must adapt. Courts are facing the need to shed any technophobia and become more willing to embrace the advances that have the ability to enhance the efficacy of the legal system….This is, after all, the twenty-first century.”

This doesn’t just “enhance the efficacy of the legal system”, it “enhances the position of he who puts the CGA in front of the jury”.

The defense had argued strenuously that the CGA unduly influenced the jury because of its visual impact. The court rejected this argument based on a rather casual acceptance of a study finding that when nothing new is presented, the CGA would have little impact. I’ll admit straight away that I haven’t done or seen any studies, but my intuitive reaction is that this is flat-out wrong. The state’s CGA depicted *their* version of a disputed self-defense killing, and showed the defendant placing the body near a knife on the floor, and showing the defendant shooting his wife in the back. These aspects of the case were hotly disputed and I just can’t help thinking that the visual images presented by the prosecution kept reverberating over and over again in the minds of the jury as they deliberated. How could they not?

Sure, the CGA did not depict anything *new*, the evidence was testified to in court and all this did was reflect it. More like amplified it, if you ask me. Can anyone really question the proposition that as the jurors sat in the jury room deliberating what happened, the CGA images of what the state said happened were locked in their minds as a reality of its own?

The real lesson from this case is not that the defense is ever going to win arguments like this, but rather that defense attorneys everywhere need to counter this kind of play with their own technology counterpunch and produce their *own* CGA videos. Resourceful (i.e., wealthy) defendants everywhere are going to have to meet this new standard of demonstrative evidence, or yield the advantage to the prosecution.

Kudos to the prosecutors for being smart enough to see the obvious advantage inherent in locking down the visual language of the case. Boos for the court that wasn’t able to grasp the real significance of this case and dismissed it with platitudes about the 21’st century. (boggle)

Read the story here.

RP

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 25th, 2006 at 2:44 pm and is filed under Software, Cool Science, News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.