Evidence is clear: Videos convict

[Sarad AV]

doesn't sound good,hope all the court rooms will be
able to authenticate the tape,I mean a very good
editing tool and a CG expert working on it may come
out with real frightening stuff.
Who would say that the dinasours of jurrasic park
didn't look real :)

Sarath.


--- "R. A. Hettinga" <rah at shipwright.com> wrote:
>
<http://www2.ocregister.com/ocrweb/ocr/article.do?id=84540>
> 
> The Orange County Register
> 
> Monday, March 8, 2004
> 
>  Evidence is clear: Videos convict
>   And sometimes it's the accused themselves who
> provide the taped version
> of the smoking gun.
> 
> 
>  By LARRY WELBORN
>  The Orange County Register
> 
> 
>  Twelve jurors and two alternates sat almost
> unblinkingly in a 10th-floor
> courtroom and watched a 21-minute videotape on two
> television monitors.
> 
> Some squirmed in the swivel seats in the jury box
> but their eyes remained
> riveted on the screens, watching images of two men
> having sex with an
> apparently unconscious woman in a Newport Beach
> apartment as techno music
> droned in the background.
> 
> The trial of Allen Ward Crocker provided jurors with
> a rare chance to see
> exactly what happened in a case of alleged sexual
> assault.
> 
>  Most of the time, jurors must decide guilt or
> innocence based on witness
> memories, documents or expert testimony. But with
> the inexpensive but
> still-sharp video cameras in existence these days,
> videotaped evidence is
> becoming more and more common in criminal
> courtrooms, veteran lawyers say.
> 
> The Crocker case has similarities to the pending
> prosecution of Gregory
> Haidl, the son of an assistant sheriff, and two of
> his teenage friends.
> 
>  They face trial next month in the alleged rape of
> an unconscious
> 16-year-old girl in July 2002.
> 
>  Haidl, 18, videotaped the encounter in Newport
> Beach, and now prosecutors
> are using those images against him.
> 
>  The accused aren't the only ones providing police
> with videotape to show
> jurors.
> 
>  In Los Angeles, an amateur photographer recorded
> the notorious videotape
> of Rodney King being beaten by Los Angeles police
> officers. And in Orange
> County, a surveillance camera at a convenience store
> captured images of a
> former mental patient murdering sheriff's Deputy
> Brad Riches.
> 
>  "I call it the proliferation of Little Brother,"
> said Costa Mesa defense
> attorney Paul S. Meyer, who has prosecuted and
> defended in criminal cases
> in Orange County for more than 30 years. "You know,
> just about everyone has
> a video camera these days. It's only common sense
> that these videotapes are
> showing up in trials."
> 
> In the Crocker case, it took the eight-man,
> four-woman jury just 90 minutes
> to reach a verdict: guilty of rape.
> 
> Deputy District Attorney Steve McGreevy argued that
> the videotape clearly
> depicted a crime-in-progress: The woman was
> unconscious after an evening of
> bar-hopping in Newport Beach and unable to give
> consent.
> 
>  Defense attorney Robert Chatterton insisted that
> the videotape showed that
> if the woman was unconscious, then Crocker, 36, of
> Tustin, was unaware of
> it. Crocker had a good-faith belief that the woman
> consented to sex,
> Chatterton argued.
> 
>  "We were able to witness it ourselves," said juror
> Kristina Durbin, 27, a
> health-care worker who lives in Mission Viejo.
> "Without the videotape, I
> wouldn't have been able to reach the decision
> because he would have been
> able to put doubt in my mind. But with the
> videotape, the crime he was
> charged with was right in front of me."
> 
>  The rape was caught on tape because Crocker's
> friend and alleged
> accomplice, Tim Marino, 41, started his video camera
> rolling after the
> victim passed out.
> 
>  The victim testified that she didn't know what was
> happening to her and
> didn't know that the episode had been videotaped.
> 
> A $500,000 arrest warrant has been issued for
> Marino, who never kept an
> appointment with a Newport Beach police detective
> after an investigation of
> the Sept. 14, 2003, encounter was launched.
> 
>  Prominent Orange County defense attorney Jennifer
> Keller, a former deputy
> public defender and a former president of the Orange
> County Bar
> Association, said videotaped crimes won't be so rare
> in the future.
> 
> "It seems everything we do now is recorded or
> videotaped," Keller said. "To
> our children, video cameras are second nature."
> 
> Assistant District Attorney Roseanne Froeberg, head
> of the office's
> sex-crimes unit, said there have been sporadic cases
> in the past in which
> rapes or other sex crimes were memorialized on
> videotape. But she said she
> is seeing more of them lately.
> 
> "It does make it easier for us to prosecute when
> criminals videotape
> themselves in the act," she said. "But to me, it is
> a sad commentary on our
> society. Videotaping their perversions for sport
> takes things to different
> level. An incredibly ugly level, in my opinion."
> 
> Said Meyer: "I call these ego crimes, where the
> criminals memorialize their
> deeds on videotape." And yes, he added, "we will be
> seeing more and more of
> these."
> 
> -- 
> -----------------
> R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah at ibuc.com>
> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation
> <http://www.ibuc.com/>
> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
> "... however it may deserve respect for its
> usefulness and antiquity,
> [predicting the end of the world] has not been found
> agreeable to
> experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of
> the Roman Empire'
> 


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