OU Visual Evidence Programme
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The document outlines the program and abstracts from a jury symposium focused on the use of visual evidence in legal contexts, held on June 11, 2010. Key topics discussed include advancements in face mapping, virtual reality applications in forensic visualization, the impact of the CSI effect on juror expectations, and the emergence of multisensory law as a new discipline. Future directions for research and collaboration were also considered, highlighting the complex interplay between technology and legal processes.
OU Visual Evidence Programme
- 1. Jury Symposium on Visual Evidence Friday 11th June 2010, Open University, Milton Keynes Programme overview 9.55- 10.00 Welcome 10.00-10.30 Richard Neave Face mapping as evidence in court 10.30-10.55 Chris Williams Surveillance footage as evidence in 1935 Coffee/tea 10.55-11.10 11.10-11.40 Minhua Eunice Ma Virtual Reality and 3D Animation in Forensic Visualisation 11.40-12.10 Gerry Derksen How Real is Too Real? Avatars Influence on Judgment Lunch 12.10 – 1.10 1.10-1.35 Graham Pike CSI effect and visual evidence 1.35-2.00 Burkhard Schafer Mind, your own business? fMRI imaging in the legal process Break 2.00-2.10 2.00 – 2.45 Colette R. Brunschwig Multisensory law, a new legal discipline, and how it’s related to (audio)-visual evidence 3.00-3.25 Burkhard Schafer Beyond the grave: Multimedia, victim impact statements and the role of multisensory jurisprudence Coffee/tea 3.25 – 3.40 3.40 -4.00 Michael Bromby Review of jury symposium held in March 2010: key themes and outcomes 4.00-5.00 Discussion Where do we need to go from here? Future work/directions/collaborations Abstracts
- 2. “Face Mapping” as Evidence in Court Richard Neave This presentation is given from the perspective of someone who drifted into the field of what became known as Face Mapping, almost by accident, over twenty years ago. Today the use of surveillance images in Court as evidence of a specific event having occurred has become as much a routine as the use of the surveillance imaging techniques themselves. When this material is used as evidence of a specific individual being present or involved in such an event the use of pictures either moving or still are likely to become an important part of the evidence placed before the Court. For the Members of the Jury the introduction of this type of evidence can come as a great relief from the prolonged periods of argument and questioning upon which they have to concentrate, for the expert witness however, presenting such evidence can sometimes be quite challenging. Twenty years ago the high point of such evidence often came when two sets of outlines printed on to cell were placed on an overhead projector and slowly superimposed. The image may well have been projected onto a wall or hastily acquired screen. Such simple home spun methods are hardly acceptable in this digital age and in most cases the images will be seen on fixed TV monitors and manipulated from a Lap Top Computer through which more sophisticated techniques can be demonstrated. However this move from the home-spun to the digital age inevitably raises new questions and new uncertainties some of which may be touched upon in this presentation. Surveillance footage as evidence in 1935 Chris Williams Keywords: History, surveillance, bureaucracy In 1935, the people of the English town of Chesterfield were among the first to be captured by police cine film surveillance. The targets of this operation were groups of working-class men engaging in a widespread but illegal practice: off-course cash betting. This event is significant in itself, but its denouement also illustrates a number of the issues raised by visual surveillance and its interaction with the legal system. This, probably the first attempt to show footage in court, ended more as a fiasco than a spectacular, chiefly owing to the problems of reconciling the evidence obtained from a cine camera with the prevailing laws of evidence. Virtual Reality and 3D Animation in Forensic Visualisation
- 3. Minhua Eunice Ma Key words: serious games, 3D visualization, Virtual Reality Computer-generated 3D animation is an ideal media to accurately visualise crime or accident scenes to the viewers and in the courtrooms. Based upon factual data, forensic animations can reproduce the scene and demonstrate the activity at various points in time. Using computer animation techniques to reconstruct crime scenes is beginning to replace the traditional illustrations, photographs, and verbal descriptions and becoming popular in today’s forensics. This paper integrates work in the areas of 3D graphics, computer vision, motion tracking, Natural Language Processing and forensic computing, to investigate the state-of-the-art in forensic visualisation. It identifies and reviews areas where new applications of 3D digital technologies and Artificial Intelligence could be used to enhance particular phases of the forensic visualisation in order to create 3D models and animations automatically and quickly. Having discussed the relationships between major crime types and Level-of-Details in corresponding forensic animations, we recognised that high Level-of-Detail animation involving human characters, which is appropriate for many major crime types but is used limitly in courtrooms, could be useful for crime investigation. How Real is Too Real? Avatars Influence on Judgment Gerry Derksen Keywords: animated re-enactments, jury perception, judgment Researchers have found that realistic qualities of avatar design and animation in re- enactments of crime scenes has little effect on rational judgment. An emotional response toward the avatars does change, however, based on how much the characters embody humanistic qualities. (Nowak, 2004) Likenesses have yet to reach indistinguishable levels of humans or human action, but still have the ability to provoke viewers into responding as though avatars were ‘real’. We must consider the differences between emotional, moral and rational judgment and how much these cognitive responses interact while assessing criminal behaviour. Computer simulations test the abilities of people to perform tasks under controlled conditions, in controlled environments often considered low-fidelity in representing the world. Getting users to respond emotionally to simulations does not require very life-like animation. Stress felt by pilots training to fly aircraft in difficult situations, is similar to our own experience in going to the movies. We feel sad or laugh at animated images on the screen as if the actors were real human beings. The only difference is we would consider films of this kind very realistic or at least a
- 4. characterisation of the real world. Representations in simulators as in movies become surrogates for reality and we respond accordingly regardless of their fidelity. Rational judgments about the world conflict with moral judgment because the former relates to our understanding of the physical, where the latter requires consideration of abstractions, such as virtues of good and evil, and is often associated with post hoc emotionally based rationalizations. (Haidt, 2001) If we are able to achieve real world representations in all of its quality the potential to question moral judgment using rational means becomes probable because all rationalizations are satisfied. The other side of the ‘uncanny valley’ (Mori, 1970) approaches and eventually achieves ‘absolute realism’ eliminating the uneasiness of human-like avatars, thus mitigating misconceptions of their goodness or badness. Deliberate consideration of the animation can afford a more reasoned approach to persuasion and may encourage less reliance on perception and intuition to make judgments. Driven by the fascination with technologies potential to represent realism animators continue to work toward creating environments that rival the natural world. All the advantages of animation software to improve qualities such as movement, texture and lighting will affect greater levels of realism and in turn emotional response and moral judgement are affected. The future of animation seems to point toward a parallel world filled with avatars that look, move and sound like humans in environments that evoke and respond as exact replicas to reality. Only monitoring the influence animation has over the viewers can determine its continued use in the field of law. CSI effect and visual evidence Graham Pike The impact of the CSI effect tends to be defined as the expectation of jurors that objective, indisputable forensic evidence will decide a case. Although this provides a useful way of exploring the difference between reality and fiction/expectations in how physical evidence is constructed and utiliised, it is equally, if not even more, applicable to the use of visual evidence. Many different techniques are used to construct visual evidence, particularly when it comes to identification, but many are not only entirely subjective but seem to use the CSI effect to present evidence in alignment with the expectations of jurors. This presentation explores the CSI effect in relation to visual identification evidence and compares the reality of contemporary techniques with how they tend to be presented to, and seen by, jurors.
- 5. Mind, your own business? fMRI imaging in the legal process Burkhard Schafer The paper reports the findings of a collaborative workshops series between Edinburgh Neuroscience, SYNAPSE and the AHRC funded SCRIPT Centre at the School of Law of the University of Edinburgh. It centres on the use of fMRI brain imaging techniques, a technology that has recently been used In a number of high profile criminal cases in the US and India. The paper gives an overview of the legal and technological issues involved, and focused I particular on the prejudicial effect fMRI images can have on jury decision making Multisensory law, a new legal discipline, and how it’s related to (audio)-visual evidence Colette R. Brunschwig Key words: multisensory law, visual law, audio-visual law, auditive law, tactile- kinesthetic law, olfactory-gustatory law The ongoing digital revolution has manifold implications for the law. The growing number of non-textual phenomena in the legal context raises a host of new questions that established legal disciplines find difficult to answer. The community on Multisensory Law at C. H. Beck publishers (see http://blog.beck.de/gruppen/multisensorylaw) aims to tackle these questions by positioning multisensory law as a new legal discipline. It also seeks to foster and establish scientific and practical discourse on multisensory law. Despite the existence of this community and other scientific endeavours (for example, the Munich Conference on Visual, Audio-Visual, and Multisensory Law, http://www.rwi.uzh.ch/oe/zrf/abtrv/konferenzen/2009/Muenchen.html), multisensory law is still an unknown legal discipline. In view of this situation, this paper adopts an interdisciplinary approach in an attempt to intensify the debate on multisensory law. It addresses the following key questions in order to introduce this discipline to a broader audience: 1. What does the term “multisensory law” mean? 2. What is the subject matter of multisensory law? 3. What cognitive/epistemological interest does multisensory law have? 4. How does multisensory law constitute a new legal discipline? Beyond the grave: Multimedia, victim impact statements and the role of multisensory jurisprudence
- 6. Burkhard Schafer Keywords: computational legal theory; legal epistemology; multisensory jurisprudence The talk introduces “multisensory jurisprudence” a term coined by Colette Brunschwig, and shows its relevance for the topics of this workshop. As a particularly vivid example, the use of video clips in jury death penalty hearings in the US is introduced and discussed. There, the cases of Kelly v. California, 07-11703 & Zamudio v. California set problematic precedents for the use of highly emotionally charged and professionally edited videos in the sentencing stage. An attempt at a critique of these decisions is made, drawing on insights from a range of cognate disciplines. Review of jury symposium held in March 2010: key themes and outcomes Michael Bromby A two-day jury symposium was held at the Institute for Advanced Studies, Strathclyde University, Scotland on March 25th 2010. The themes of the symposium were the jury and…. the law, the accused, the complainer, witnesses, jurors and the future. This talk will discuss the key themes and outcomes of this event. One outcome will be the forthcoming Jury Research Network. The aim of this network is it to link juror researchers together to facilitate collaboration. It will have its own website, research themes, methodological support and events.