Order in the e-Court!

theodp writes "Every word spoken in the e-Courtroom where Branden Basham is on trial for his life appears immediately before the judge on a computer screen. There's a flat-screen monitor between every two seats in the jury box, a witness-box monitor with touch-screen features, and large-screen monitors for public viewing. Lawyers say e-Courtrooms help reduce trial time by making evidence display and tracking documents more efficient. 'It made the Chadrick Fulks' case three to five days shorter,' said an Assistant U.S. Attorney, referring to Basham's co-defendant, who plead guilty and was sentenced to death."

Comments

Re:Lawyers love this

[masoncooper]

There's no loss. Entering the evidence into the trial presentation software takes time too. But usually this is carried out by legal assistants. Our firm uses a product called Visionary that allows us to lay out all sorts of evidence and recall it at a moments notice to present on the secondary display. The cool part is that the software is free, they make their money through processing video. When a deposition comes in, you can request a tape from the court reporting service and then send it to them, they will then encode the entire thing and sync the transcript with the video. The result is the ability to highlight a paragraph or even a sentence in the depo and press play, the secondary display then shows the playback of the person actually saying that. Seeing someone say something has a MUCH greater effect on the judge or jury than simply quoting them.

Theatrics

[linuxwrangler]

I've thought for a long time that the entire case should be recorded and then shown to a jury. Both sides can present their best cases and nobody can get away with theatrics.

Atty 1: "So has your buggering of small animals caused harm to your eyesight making you an unfit witness?"

Atty 2: "Objection"

Judge: "Sustained - the jury is instructed to disregard."

Atty 1: "No further questions"

Any question/response ruled inadmissable would be deleted - no chance of influencing the jury either intentionally or by accident.

If the jury pool is tainted or unable to reach a verdict, just seat a new jury and replay the recordings.

If evidence or judge's instructions are ruled incorrect or inadmissable by a higher court just edit the recording and show it to a new jury. This also eliminates the problem of a witness who dies before a retrial.

Re:My job

[here4fun]

grandparent: When we're testing the systems in new installations we're ordered to cut back on the gamma and hike up the contrast for the cameras that focus on the defendant. The reason? To make the defendant more menacing.

parent: Is it any worse than having the defendant show up with freshly cut hair, a clean shaved face, and in a suit?

Should it matter how the defendant looks? If we have a system where looks matter, then we need a new system. If someone is white and in a nice suit, should that excuse the person, where the judge thinks "oh, he made a bad mistake, i feel sorry for him", but if it is a poor black teen the judge thinks "miserable evil uneducated basturd, you deserve to suffer for being so dark".

It is like there are two legal systems, one for the rich and one for the poor. One who can afford their own private lawyer, and one who gets a public defender. Let me guess, these monitors will mostly be used with poorer people who can't afford their own attorney to assert their rights.