Why Video Evidence is So Difficult To Use to Get a Conviction?
For the Europeans amongst us, allow a bit of back story. A black man was being “frisked” (i.e., not arrested, but essentially being moved) from where he was engaged in a mildly illegal, but very common practice. He was selling individual cigarettes instead of a pack. This is common in New York, where a $5.00 city tax on a pack of smokes makes the pack very expensive. It is comparable (in both statue and commonality) to jaywalking, speeding or double parking.
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During the course of this frisking, as was common, he complained. In this instance the police told him to get on his knees. As he was too slow, the police (in their words) “took him down”. Whether through accident or on purpose, the police used a “chock-hold” to take him to the ground. This is against police policy since 1993. In the course of this, Mr. Garner was chocked and began to resist, because he could not breath. The more he struggled, the more the police chocked him. Even as he screamed (on the video) “I can’t breathe”.
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The police then chocked him until he died. It was homicide – as the coroner reported. Homicide, the deliberate and unlawful killing of one person by another. Furthermore, it was all capture on video. Every sad moment of it, included the death of Mr. Garner by a policeman, surround by 4 other policemen. For selling a single cigarette for $0.25.
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Yesterday, the Grand Jury cleared the policeman from any criminal wrong doing.
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Many (white) people are shocked, as they have seen the video. Black people aren’t shocked, but saddened, because it is another chapter in the story that black lives (especially black male lives) don’t matter.
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My two cents at this point, is out of the realm of white / black here, but to the story of video tape. I have seen a number of cases where “obvious” video evidence doesn’t lead to indictments or convictions. And people as why. The answer is, oddly enough, the video itself in many cases.
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Defense attorneys will often play graphic, disgusting video evidence over and over. Asking jurors to look at this particular blow, or this particular act. In Orange County a few years ago three college age men were found not guilty of drugging, raping and assaulting a woman on a pool table, which they filmed, but showing her being assaulted with a pool – queue over and over. The defense focused on a flinch in the woman’s thigh. Despite the drool, the loll of the head, the eyes rolled back, the defense argued that this twitch meant she was not passed out and consented.
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If we saw it once, we would be shock and sickened, twice and we would be appalled. 20 or 30 times, and you get used to the scene, you look for twitch or ignore it completely. Don’t think it is true? How many times have you seen that sad “Arms of An Angel” dog video – so many that is no longer moving, but just annoying.
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Video evidence that is so vile you can’t watch, isn’t nearly as effective as you think.