How Video Evidence Can Be Differently Interpreted In Courts – From Rodney King To George Floyd
News media coverage of Derek Chauvin’s trial for the murder of George Floyd highlighted the role of video as a “star witness.” Jurors in this trial saw footage from cellphones, police body cameras, dashboard cameras and surveillance cameras. In his closing arguments, prosecuting attorney Steve Schleicher even told the jurors, “Believe your eyes. What you saw, you saw.”
For the past eight years I have been studying the use of video as evidence both in international human rights courts and tribunals and in state and federal courts in the U.S. As a media scholar, I pay close attention to how people interpret video as evidence. One of the things I have found is that the argument “seeing is believing” is not as intuitive as it sounds.
‘Who do you believe?’
On March 3, 1991, a Los Angeles resid...