Do I Need to Draw You a Picture? The Zimmerman Trial and CGI Evidence

The Zimmerman trial nicely illustrates how messy trials can be. Witnesses contradict one another on most critical issues. For example, a bevy of witnesses have split over whether it was the victim Trayvon Martin or the defendant George Zimmerman screaming for help on the 911 recording. Moreover, the split among witnesses is, predictably, along party lines: friends and relatives of each claim the voice as their own. To make things messier, some of these witnesses seem to have contradicted themselves, asserting earlier that they couldn’t recognize the voice despite their trial testimony that now positively identifies it. Adding to the confusion, some witnesses deny making the earlier inconsistent statements.

So, what’s the jury to make of this morass? The defense solution is to draw a picture – literally. Yesterday the parties sparred over the defense’s attempts to introduce a computer-animated recreation of the fatal struggle between Zimmerman and Martin. Computer-graphic imaging (CGI) technology is being used more and more to recreate events in a myriad of cases. A week of conflicting testimony may be reduced to a 60-second cartoon.

There are two problems here. First, the accuracy (authentication) of a CGI recreation depends on its fidelity to the historical record: does it accurately reflect what occurred? Hard to say in this case. Martin is dead. Zimmerman has not testified. The CGI recreation rests on the creators’ reconstruction of events based on conflicting pretrial statements, including Zimmerman’s, some of which have been contradicted by trial testimony, itself no model of clarity.

Put differently, the CGI recreation is the animators’ version of the shooting, resting heavily on the defense version of events. It is tantamount to Zimmerman’s story of what occurred with one crucial difference: Zimmerman does not have to take the stand and face cross-examination under oath about any of it. My own view is that it should be excluded unless Zimmerman takes the stand and testifies that it “fairly and accurately” depicts what happened.

Continue ReadingDo I Need to Draw You a Picture? The Zimmerman Trial and CGI Evidence

Independence Day from the Eyes of the British

Virginia City 4thOn July 4, 1776, the newly formed United States declared its independence from Britain. In the Declaration of Independence, the country’s founders laid out their grievances with the Crown:

The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

Among the many listed facts: taxation without consent, trial without jury, and quartering of soldiers in the colonies.

Each July 4, we celebrate that independence with parades and picnics, flags and fireworks. Nearly every man, woman, and child dons red, white, and blue in some form or another. It’s the height of American pride. (Although see here for examples of Americans having no idea why we celebrate the Fourth of July or even when and from whom we declared our independence.)

But I’ve never thought to look at the day from another perspective. Until this year.

Continue ReadingIndependence Day from the Eyes of the British

America the Beautiful

Pikes PeakIn the summer of 1893, Katharine Lee Bates traveled from Boston, where she was an English professor at Wellesley College, to Colorado to teach a session at Colorado College. While in Colorado Springs, she climbed Pikes Peak, and at the top of the 14,155 foot summit, she began to fashion in her mind the words to the poem that became “America the Beautiful.” When she came down from the mountain, she finished the poem at her hotel. The poem was published two years later in The Congregationalist. The original title of the poem was “America. A poem for July 4.”

When the poem was recast into a hymn by Samuel A. Ward in 1910, the title changed to “America the Beautiful.” Ward was on a ferry in New York when he thought of the tune. In a moment of inspiration, and so he wouldn’t forget the tune, Ward borrowed a friend’s shirt cuff and jotted the notes down on it.

Bates traveled to Colorado by train, and she saw several places that you can see in the poem: the wheat fields of Kansas, the buildings of the Chicago World’s Fair, and the Great Plains.

Continue ReadingAmerica the Beautiful