tag:theconversation.com,2011:/global/topics/meredith-kercher-murder-15703/articlesMeredith Kercher murder – The Conversation2014-02-03T14:54:15Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/226782014-02-03T14:54:15Z2014-02-03T14:54:15ZExplainer: how does the Italian criminal justice system work?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/40490/original/wzxrgfm9-1391435784.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Il bill vecchio.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Adrian Pingstone</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In the light of Friday’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/amanda-knox-guilty-again-in-case-that-has-long-cast-her-as-femme-fatale-22602">guilty verdict</a> in the case of Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito, the Italian criminal justice system is once again under the magnifying glass. Foreign scrutiny of the case has so far been <a href="https://theconversation.com/knox-case-has-put-the-italian-legal-system-on-trial-in-the-us-22606">unflattering</a> to the Italian legal system (and Italy in general), not helped by the seemingly endless twists and turns of a case that has been running for close to seven years. In particular, commentators have focused on the central role of the case’s <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/9238598/Amanda-Knox-prosecutors-under-investigation.html">prosecutor</a> – something poorly understood outside Italy’s distinctive legal culture.</p>
<p>The Italian constitution and acts of parliament set out a system whereby criminal prosecutors are fully independent; in particular, they have “external independence” from all the other constitutional powers. This means that they are not subject to external pressure of any kind when they execute their functions. Their independence is protected because prosecutors are part of the judiciary, which in Italy is fully separated from the other constitutional powers. In addition, the Italian constitution provides for the legality principle, which means that every case must be prosecuted: there is no judicial discretion. As the Constitutional Court has stated, this principle is intended to guarantee equality before the law within the penal process.</p>
<p>External independence does not just apply to the moment when the prosecutor decides upon penal action: the prosecutor is fully independent even during the investigation phase, during which he or she directs the police. This is a very important legal power. While it does not mean that prosecutors control the police during the investigation, prosecutors rely on the police and interact with them constantly. If the case is serious, in particular, they are effectively in charge of the investigation. </p>
<p>This does not mean that in Italy investigations are routinely conducted and structured like in England, because the police consider prosecutors as their superiors during the investigation. And even if the direction of the investigation is bureaucratic and reactive, prosecutors are still in a position to take very important decisions. Although this is a very short summary, it should help clarify why during the investigation the prosecutor becomes the key figure, and why prosecutors have so much influence over political decisions about responses to crime in Italy. </p>
<p>This should also help clarify some of the questions posed by non-academic writers and journalists during the Kercher case: prosecutors were not abusing their power, they were in fact asserting their legally defined central role in the justice system. There are obviously some questions about how this particular investigation was conducted, but they must be separated from any analysis or evaluation of the Italian system.</p>
<h2>Trial and appeal</h2>
<p>The trial of Knox and Sollecito was standard, meaning no special rules were used; on the other hand, Rudy Guede’s lawyers decided to use one of the special procedures that are aimed to speed up the criminal process, in this case a <em>giudizio abbreviato</em> or <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/oct/28/meredith-kercher-guede-knox-sollecito">fast-track trial</a>. This is something that individuals who are facing a trial can freely opt for. This is why Knox and Sollecito went through a much more complex and lengthy judicial procedure than Guede. </p>
<p>One aspect of the Knox-Sollecito case that most coverage omits to mention is that it is has now been analysed by three prosecutors (at least), a preliminary investigation judge, a preliminary hearing judge, a first instance court, two courts of appeal, the Italian Supreme Court and a significant number of skilled police officers. The context around the case is obviously very complicated, but from a legal point of view it is simply wrong to say (<a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/business_insider/2014/02/01/why_amanda_knox_is_innocent.html">as some have</a>) that it was artificially pushed along by an obsessive, tyrannical prosecutor. </p>
<h2>The Court of Cassation</h2>
<p>The Sollecito and Knox case has, however, demonstrated a major problem with the Italian CJS: the criminal process takes far too long to reach a final decision. In this case, a second appeal procedure was necessary because of the decision of the Court of Cassation (Corte di Cassazione). </p>
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<span class="caption">The Italian Court of Cassation.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Roma_2011_08_07_Palazzo_di_Giustizia.jpg">Blackcat/Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
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<p>In Italy there is a constitutional right to appeal on points of law to the Court of Cassation, which can agree with the Court of Appeal’s decision or can disagree with its interpretation of the law. This is a very important point: the Supreme Court in Italy does not review the facts of a case, so if the judges are unhappy with the previous decision, the case must be sent back to the Court of Appeal to be re-examined. </p>
<p>In this case, the Supreme Court decided that the March 2013 acquittal was “<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/18/amanda-knox-retrial_n_3459985.html">illogical</a>” because the judges had not fully considered all the evidence. This is a difficult decision to interpret, but the criteria to make an appeal on points of law and the limits to the court’s jurisdiction are flexible. In essence, this means that many decisions taken by the Supreme Court in fact straddle the border between points of law and facts. </p>
<p>This is what happened in this case, where the Court of Appeal was told to review all the evidence and issue a verdict on the basis of a logical and legal evaluation of the facts; that is exactly what the court did in the run-up to Friday’s verdict. Knox and Sollecito have therefore not been tried twice for the same crime, because in Italy, all these decisions are legally speaking part of the same continuous criminal process. This will be an important point if and when the Italian government asks for the extradition of Amanda Knox, pending the confirmation of the most recent verdict by the Supreme Court.</p>
<h2>Procedural justice</h2>
<p>The Italian criminal justice system is sometimes branded as semi-adversarial, but its legal culture and the Italian law in action in fact demonstrate an inquisitorial approach to fact-finding. Italian criminal procedure is a difficult concept to grasp for lawyers and citizens in other countries, who are used to adversarial systems. In Italy, procedural justice is part of the concept of justice: a decision is legally acceptable so long as it results from patterns of official activity that provide protection to the defendant’s rights and an opportunity to find the truth. </p>
<p>This obviously does not mean that the Italian system is infallible, and aspects of the case’s progress have certainly raised eyebrows: Amanda Knox’s statements are certainly difficult to accept as evidence, the media put a lot of pressure on prosecutors, and the police clearly acted to protect their credibility. These are certainly important problems – but they cannot be addressed without a clear understanding of how the Italian criminal justice system is set up to function. </p>
<p>We must remember that there is not a single common global ideal of justice, and that the imperfect Italian system complies with rules that are logical and rooted in a legal tradition – albeit one very different from what non-Italian audiences are used to.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/22678/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Riccardo Montana does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In the light of Friday’s guilty verdict in the case of Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito, the Italian criminal justice system is once again under the magnifying glass. Foreign scrutiny of the case has…Riccardo Montana, Lecturer in Law, City, University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/226022014-01-31T00:04:03Z2014-01-31T00:04:03ZAmanda Knox guilty again in case that has long cast her as femme fatale<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/40218/original/qqpwc62m-1391093745.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A woman in the spotlight.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Scott335</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The six-year saga that has been the trial of Amanda Knox and her former boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito for the murder of English student Meredith Kercher in Italy in 2006 has taken <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-25941999">another dramatic turn</a> after the guilty verdict imposed in 2009 and overturned in 2011 was reinstated by the court of appeal in Florence.</p>
<p>The pair were sentenced to lengthy jail terms: Knox to serve 28 years and six months and Sollecito to serve 25 years. But sentences still have to be confirmed and further appeals are expected. Knox, who heard the news at home in Seattle has indicated she would have to be “dragged kicking and screaming” back to Italy and would fight extradition.</p>
<p>And so another chapter opens in a drama that has played out in the full glare of media from the moment Knox was first arrested over Kercher’s killing in 2007. And in Knox much of the news media has constructed the femme fatale of its dreams.</p>
<p>Knox has been painted by many as the very model of a modern celebrity criminal, voted <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/4076099/Amanda-Knox-voted-Italian-woman-of-the-year.html">woman of the year</a> by an Italian TV station in 2008 and in 2012 making Maxim magazine’s list of the top 100 sexiest women. Along the way, she accrued a number of other trappings of fame, notably fan mail and marriage proposals – which prompted a somewhat flattered, somewhat perplexed response. In an ironic <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/amanda-knoxs-prison-diary-reveals-dreams-of-a-normal-family-life/story-e6frg6so-1226159962418">diary entry</a>, she cast herself as one of the most ancient of celebrities, prized for her beauty and little else: Helen of Troy. The swift and wide proliferation of websites, blogs and discussion boards devoted to the crime gives an indication of just how much interest the case, and Knox in particular, provoked.</p>
<p>From a very early stage, the idea of Knox as femme fatale gained traction as journalists shaped the slim established facts – and the much more dense material of supposition and rumour – into a suitable product for media consumption: a beautiful young woman apparently involved in a brutal sexual assault and murder. “I am not the femme fatale criminal fantasy they describe. This person does not exist,” Knox <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/10/15/us-italy-knox-idUSBRE99E0WI20131015">protested</a> to Italian TV in October last year. </p>
<p>Unfortunately for “Foxy Knoxy”, it always had been a case about a femme fatale, from the moment that <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2442261/Amanda-Knox-Raffaele-Sollecito-says-wishes-hed-laid-eyes-her.html">footage</a> of her kissing Sollecito outside her apartment, just hours after the murder, was disseminated around the world. </p>
<p>By the time the counter-spin began to churn, with the PR firm hired by her family pointing out that the nickname had been given to her as a child on the soccer pitch, it was already far too late. While Sollecito and the other accused (and swiftly convicted), Rudy Guede, soon receded into the background, Knox was handed the role of celebrity murderess.</p>
<p>One of Sollecito’s lawyers even suggested that, “being with a beautiful girl, he allowed himself to be drawn into giving her an alibi”. Journalists in court reported that Knox frequently flirted across the court room with Sollecito, who later felt it necessary to <a href="http://news.sky.com/story/743629/meredith-died-because-she-knew-attackers">insist</a> he was “not a ‘dog on a lead’ – at the beck and call of Knox”. Meanwhile, the prosecution repeatedly cast Knox as prime architect and eager participant in the killing, and sections of the press lapped it up.</p>
<p>Knox has been spared no hyperbole: one lawyer called her “a diabolical, Satanic, demonic she-devil”. Though she has found her defenders in the media, some of the “quality” press has followed a similar line to the tabloids. At times a value system has been mobilised that condemns Knox for what it perceives to be an unhealthy, immoral promiscuity. When a <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/oct/27/death-perugia-kercher-follain-review">writer in The Observer</a> suggests that leaving a vibrator in a transparent washbag and enjoying one-night stands meant Knox “knew no boundaries”, one is prompted to ask where, exactly, we are locating those boundaries – and what century we are in?</p>
<p>Above all, however, it’s not the sex, it’s the violence. Violent male offenders are understood to be conforming to well-established patterns of behaviour, even if their crimes provoke horror and revulsion. But female agents of violence are, in the words of writer Ann Lloyd, “<a href="http://www.thelawyer.com/doubly-deviant044-doubly-damned-society039s-treatment-of-violent-women/90471.article">doubly deviant, doubly damned</a>”: they have not only broken the law, they have transgressed the “rules” of what is understood to be acceptable female behaviour. A criminologist described Knox as a “<a href="http://www.express.co.uk/expressyourself/144571/Amanda-Knox-A-modern-day-She-Devil">gap-year Rose West</a>” in the Daily Express, and a former chair of the British Psychoanalytic Association likened her supposed <a href="http://www.theweek.co.uk/europe/amanda-knox/55260/amanda-knox-ready-become-fugitive-if-found-guilty-again#ixzz2iLvrLqJQ">nonchalance in court</a> to Radovan Karadzic’s “preening behaviour” during his trial.</p>
<p>The femme fatale meme is one by which society has historically sought to rationalise the violent woman, to make her “make sense” when she seems to depart so radically from accepted notions of femininity. It is a construct that provokes powerful and confused emotions. On the one hand, she excites feelings of desire in the heterosexual male; on the other, she also inspires fear, and very often her erotic charge is magnified considerably precisely because of the threat she contains. </p>
<p>The coverage of the murder of Meredith Kercher swiftly cast Knox in this role. One defence lawyer felt obliged to go out of her way in an appeal hearing in 2011 to <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/15036490">protest</a> that Knox “may have ‘femme fatale’ looks, but is not a killer”. Like that famous parody of 1940s noir femmes fatales, Jessica Rabbit, Giulia Buongiorno suggested, Knox was not bad – she had just been “drawn that way”.</p>
<p>The figure of the beautiful-but-lethal woman has always been “drawn that way”, from Basic Instinct all the way back to Eve tempting Adam. The enduring patriarchal myth of the femme fatale embodies abiding male fears and fascination with the idea that female charm conceals indelible evil. It may be that this has had little or no bearing on the verdict; nevertheless, it is significant and troubling that such stereotypes continue to circulate, and continue to be drawn upon so deeply as the media constructs images of women on trial for murder.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/22602/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stevie Simkin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The six-year saga that has been the trial of Amanda Knox and her former boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito for the murder of English student Meredith Kercher in Italy in 2006 has taken another dramatic turn…Stevie Simkin, Reader in Drama and Film, University of WinchesterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/226062014-01-30T15:50:13Z2014-01-30T15:50:13ZKnox case has put the Italian legal system on trial in the US<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/40209/original/czzdmknw-1391087298.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Amanda Knox in the hands of the Italian police.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Antonio Calanni/AP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Amanda Knox has faced three verdicts in six years over a case in which it was alleged she was part of a brutal knife attack on Meredeth Kercher in Perugia in 2007 that resulted in her death. Although Knox maintains her innocence, the Italian prosecution case against her continues and a guilty verdict has been <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/30/amanda-knox-raffaele-sollecito-lose-meredith-kercher-murder-appeal">reinstated</a>.</p>
<p>Why? It is in part down to the results of the American’s previous criminal procedures. In 2009, the jury that presided over Ms Knox’s initial trial unanimously <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/12/04/italy.knox.trial/">found her guilty</a> of homicide, sexual violence, staging a crime scene, and criminal defamation. But in 2011, Knox <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Latest-News-Wires/2011/1003/Amanda-Knox-appeal-successful-to-be-set-free-immediately">successfully appealed</a> and won release from prison. In a report explaining its decision, the appellate court cited a <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2011/12/15/world/europe/italy-amanda-knox/">lack of evidence</a>. Many in the United States believed this spectacular reversal of fortune to be the final word in the Knox case. However, another chapter had yet to be written. </p>
<p>In March 2013, Italy’s highest court, the Court of Cassation, <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/18/amanda-knox-retrial_n_3459985.html">granted</a> a prosecution appeal requesting that the 2011 appellate verdict be set aside. In rendering its decision, the court ordered that a tribunal in Florence re-hear Knox’s appeal to correct procedural errors made by the court that presided over her first appeal two years earlier.</p>
<p>Throughout all this, Amanda Knox has received strong support from the media in her home country. In fact, the outcome of her 2009 trial led to intense criticism from journalists in the US, who blamed the young woman’s fate on rampant anti-Americanism, media bias, an allegedly corrupt prosecutor, and the Italian justice system itself. In 2011, <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1308/18/cotc.02.html">reporters contended</a> that the prosecution had presented only two pieces of evidence against Knox and her co-accused, Raffaele Sollecito: a knife that contained Knox’s DNA on the handle and purportedly also Kercher’s on the blade, and a bra clasp belonging to the victim that tested positive for Sollecito’s DNA. </p>
<p>Sollecito was originally convicted along with Knox but both were acquitted completely on appeal before the reinstatement. A third person, Ivorian Rudy Guede remains in prison, convicted of the murder.</p>
<p>The American media proclaimed both pieces of evidence contaminated. Finally, a flurry of claims regarding the violation of Knox’s right to <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/world/2013/09/30/amanda-knox-retrial-begins-monday-in-italy/">double jeopardy</a> followed the Court of Cassation’s 2013 decision. Above all, much of the American coverage of Knox’s case ironically contends that she only fell under suspicion to begin with because of salacious media reporting. But what of the American coverage itself? In many instances, American media scrutiny of the Knox case has cast the Italian authorities and the nation’s justice system as the villains in what is unquestionably a very complex narrative. </p>
<h2>Italy in the spotlight</h2>
<p>In 2010, I reviewed more than 400 news reports on the Knox case dating from November 2007 to March of 2010 to examine how the American media represented both the proceedings and, in particular, Italy itself. </p>
<p>I sorted each news report into one of three categories: neutral, unfavourable to Italy, and favourable to Italy. To receive a classification of neutral, all news reports needed to present representatives to explain both sides of the case. Neutral reports also required factually accurate information, and could not withhold salient details about the case from their audiences. Finally, any report relying upon stereotypical characterisations or inflammatory language about Italy could not receive a score of neutral. Similarly, reports were categorised as favourable to Italy if they presented only the prosecution’s side of the argument without considering the defence’s, or if they gave an inaccurate or incomplete view of the evidence. </p>
<p>Of the 409 items I considered, 251 were classified as neutral while 158 received a score of unfavourable. None fell into the category of favourable to Italy.</p>
<p>In fact, although most of the coverage did prove neutral, it was surprising to note how often American journalists did pick a side. And none of them ever seemed to side with the Italian authorities that prosecuted Knox. One recurring theme in this respect was a tendency to present experts on forensic science or law who attempted to discredit the case against Amanda Knox without any effort at presenting the viewpoints of competing experts. </p>
<p>In one instance, a CNN report quoted Anne Bremner, a spokesperson for an advocacy group known as the friends of Amanda Knox, who referred to the evidence collection techniques as “<a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/11/04/italy.amanda.knox.evidence/index.html?iref=24hours">Fellini forensics</a>”. Although Bremner never explained exactly what this phrase meant, since it evoked the name of acclaimed director Federico Fellini who was known for films that mixed realism and fantasy, the phrase was obviously derisory.</p>
<p>American coverage of the case often failed to report significant points of evidence against the defendant to its audience. In an <a href="http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0912/07/lkl.01.html">October 2009 interview</a> with CNN’s Larry King, Amanda Knox’s mother Edda Mellas stated that there was no evidence of Knox’s presence in the room where the murder took place. This is technically true, but it has been claimed that this fails to account for the presence of DNA evidence in other locations throughout the residence. The prosecution contends this places Knox in the apartment at the time of the murder. </p>
<p>But perhaps most regrettable of all is a reliance on stereotypical portrayals of Italians to effectively discredit their system of justice. Much of the American coverage spoke of “an ancient Italian code of <a href="http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/02/amanda-knox-revisited/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0">saving face</a>”, which allegedly led to Knox’s conviction. Nina Burleigh, who <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Fatal-Gift-Beauty-Trials/dp/0307588599">wrote a book</a> on the Knox case and frequently contributed reports and commentary on the proceedings to American cable news networks, blamed Italian attitudes towards women for Knox’s predicament, even though she was one of three defendants accused of the crime – the other two being male. None of these arguments seemed to address the larger question of whether or not Knox was likely to have participated in Meredith Kercher’s death.</p>
<p>Today, more than six years after the murder, the answer to that question still remains unclear. Was Amanda Knox the victim of a tragic miscarriage of justice in 2009? Although the ruling in Florence was meant to determine Amanda Knox’s guilt or innocence in the matter, the case will not end here. And in the United States it is Italy and its justice system that seems to actually be on trial.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/22606/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sarah Annunziato does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Amanda Knox has faced three verdicts in six years over a case in which it was alleged she was part of a brutal knife attack on Meredeth Kercher in Perugia in 2007 that resulted in her death. Although Knox…Sarah Annunziato, Lecturer, Italian studies, University of VirginiaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/197342013-10-31T15:17:29Z2013-10-31T15:17:29ZComputer-generated images influence trial results<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/34181/original/6fbvq3hy-1383227589.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Animated evidence is often used in court but is it reliable?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Gareth Norris</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Recent cases involving the use of computer generated images as evidence in courtrooms have shown the powerful impact they can have on jury decision making. But studies show that jurors can be unduly influenced by these images and videos. </p>
<p>The case over the murder of British student Meredith Kercher is a particularly high-profile example that highlights the way in which computer-generated exhibits can be used to “fit” the evidence. The successful appeal of Amanda Knox and her co-defendant Raffaele Sollecito called the validity of the graphic animated sequence used in the trial into question since it was based on flawed forensic evidence in the first place. The case showed the importance of having reliable forensic evidence to support the content of an animation before deciding to use it in a trial. </p>
<h2>What are the rules here?</h2>
<p>One of the surprising issues to arise in debates on the admissibility of computer generated exhibits is that there are very few formal guidelines on appearance, content and style. In the US, where they are more frequently used, standards set a range of guidelines for the acceptance of expert, technical and scientific evidence. However, even in the US, the judge generally decides what is and isn’t admissible. This means that there is substantial variability in the acceptance of computer-generated material at trial.</p>
<p>This raises a number of concerns. I have demonstrated that by manipulating often minute and discrete variables in these images and videos that they can exert wildly different results. This suggests that the variation in presentation styles and technology used will undoubtedly create problems for jurors and other legal decision makers.</p>
<h2>Easily swayed</h2>
<p>Alongside the ambiguity over the legal standards of animated evidence, there has been relatively little empirical examination of the potential impact using evidence of this kind might have on trial results when compared to other ways of offering evidence to a jury.</p>
<p>One early experimental <a href="http://web.williams.edu/Psychology/Faculty/Kassin/files/kassin_dunn_1997.pdf">study</a>, presented participants with a number of hypothetical scenarios based around an equivocal suicide. The overall premise under investigation was whether the deceased had fallen or jumped from a roof of a building. This was established by looking at the distance of the body from the edge of the building. If the body was found at between five and ten feet, it is more likely the person might have slipped and fallen. A longer distance of around 20-25 feet would suggest they had jumped.</p>
<p>Participants were shown computer-generated images that either supported or contradicted the premise that the deceased had fallen. They either showed the body as landing near or far away from the building. Of most concern in this case was the fact that a significant number of participants believed that a falling object – in this case a human who had fallen – could land 20-25 feet from a building when the computer-generated evidence suggested that this is what had happened. Ultimately, this led to the suggestion that people are poor intuitive physicists and easily influenced by computer generated images.</p>
<p>The study did also show, however, that when the physical evidence was congruent with the animated sequence, the video evidence served to improve juror decision accuracy. This implies that, when used correctly, animated evidence can be useful. </p>
<h2>Depends which way you look at it</h2>
<p>There is also evidence that juries might react differently to animated evidence depending on the perspective from which it is presented. </p>
<p>In my own <a href="http://www.bywhau.co.uk">research</a>, manipulating the “angle of view” in an animated vehicle accident demonstrated stark differences in culpability judgements. When participants were presented with an animation of a car crash that depicted the situation from overhead, they were more likely to conclude that the driver of one car was at fault. If the animation was presented with an in-car perspective, they appeared more likely to conclude the other driver was at fault.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/34182/original/5q4j2w4f-1383227698.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/34182/original/5q4j2w4f-1383227698.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/34182/original/5q4j2w4f-1383227698.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=147&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34182/original/5q4j2w4f-1383227698.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=147&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34182/original/5q4j2w4f-1383227698.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=147&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34182/original/5q4j2w4f-1383227698.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=185&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34182/original/5q4j2w4f-1383227698.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=185&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34182/original/5q4j2w4f-1383227698.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=185&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Animated evidence can be presented from different perspectives.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Gareth Norris</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>With more sophisticated VR evidence – where jurors can take on an interactive “first-person” role – understanding the potential psychological impact of this technology is vitally important to ensure fairness and proportionality.</p>
<h2>Lessons to learn</h2>
<p>At a basic level, jurors and other legal decision makers must be made aware that these exhibits are merely a representation of one potential sequence of events. Clearly, the vivid and easily compressible nature of these demonstrations can be linked to hypothesised models of jury decision making and could – in some circumstances – encroach upon the ultimate issue and extend beyond their intended probative value.</p>
<p>Psychological theories and research methodologies have a great deal to offer the courts and legal profession in relation to CGE. Just as it seems incredible that we would have once put a child witness in a courtroom or introduced relatively unqualified “experts” to offer advice, so it may also be that we allowed sophisticated techniques of persuasion to form part of legal trials without any real safeguards or guidelines in place.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/19734/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gareth Norris does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Recent cases involving the use of computer generated images as evidence in courtrooms have shown the powerful impact they can have on jury decision making. But studies show that jurors can be unduly influenced…Gareth Norris, Lecturer, Department of Law and Criminology, Aberystwyth UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.