Does video evidence need to be attested to by a human? If video filmed by (say) a smartphone is used as evidence, does the person who filmed it have to submit an affidavit saying &quot;I filmed that at location X at time Y&quot;? Or can the video be used as evidence without that?
If video filmed by (say) a smartphone is used as evidence, does the person who filmed it have to submit an affidavit saying &quot;I filmed that at location X at time Y&quot;? Or can the video be used as evidence without that? Short Answer Someone must testify to authenticate video evidence but it doesn't necessarily have to be the person who filmed it and an affidavit would frequently not be sufficient to do so. Long Answer There are two main kinds of evidence: exhibits and testimony. Videos are a form of exhibit even though they may sometimes record testimony (and videos of depositions and trial testimony are often treated as testimony rather than exhibits for many purposes). Video evidence (like all other exhibits) must be authenticated to be admitted in court and considered to resolve disputes presented to a court (at least in common law court systems like England, the U.S., Australia, etc.) Authentication means to provide context to show what the evidence is and how it came to be and that it is what it purports to be. Some of the evidence provided to authenticate an exhibit is also called &quot;foundation.&quot; The burden of proof to authenticate a document is a fairly low bar. Generally, if a party can provide prima facie evidence sufficient if believed to be true to authenticate an exhibit and another party disputes its authenticity, the exhibit is admitted and the question of authenticity at that point becomes one for a judge or jury as a finder of fact to weigh based upon all of the evidence, and not a question regarding whether or not the evidence can be admitted for consideration at trial. There are multiple ways that evidence can be authenticated, and this is not limited to testimony from the person who took the video. Someone who was present when the video was taken, for example, could also authenticate it. A chain of custody is often part of proof of authentication. Any way to prove that the evidence is what it purports to be and to establish what it purports to be that logic and reason supports is allowed. There are a few kinds of exhibits that are self-authenticating (e.g. government documents under seal), but video evidence rarely qualifies as self-authenticating (in part because it can be manipulated and someone needs to testify that it was not manipulated). There are other kinds of evidence which may be authenticated by affidavit under safe harbor provisions of rules of evidence, such as certain evidence provided in response to a subpoena duces tecum (i.e. a subpoena to produce documents) in some jurisdictions. But the general rule is that an affidavit is not sufficient and that exhibits including video evidence must be authenticated with the live testimony of a witness under oath who has personal knowledge of the facts to be established which is subject to cross-examination.
There is no hard and fast rule to determine what constitutes proof beyond a reasonable doubt. In the first instance, the judge (or jury, when there is a jury trial) decides this on a case by case basis. If the officer testifies that the matters recorded in the ticket are true because it was the officer's practice to always record accurately what happened in a ticket, this would ordinarily not be grounds for reversal of a conviction on the ground of insufficient evidence, unless other evidence somehow put the officer's testimony in serious doubt (e.g. a social media post clearly putting the officer in another location at the time that the ticket was allegedly issued). Normally, the only kind of evidence that would not result in a ticket being upheld on appeal would be the failure of the officer to testify at all.
In the U.S. this is a notoriously perilous area of the law, particularly because the laws regarding recording vary so much between the states. A good source for this question is the RCFP. To give you an example: In Pennsylvania it is a felony to record "oral communication" in any circumstance in which the speaker would be justified in expecting it to not be recorded. Legally, as soon as you turn on an audio recorder in PA, you had better make sure nobody unaware that you're recording wanders within range of your microphone!
GDPR seems quite clear that if you are recording calls, video and/or audio, you must get consent. Wrong. The GDPR requires that your have a legal basis for processing personal data. Consent is a legal basis but there are others. With respect to note taking, the GDPR only applies to “personal data wholly or partly by automated means and to the processing other than by automated means of personal data which form part of a filing system or are intended to form part of a filing system.” So, if they notes are not about an individual (and many B2B phone calls will not be) or are neither automated nor filed, the GDPR does not apply. If they are captured by the GDPR, you need to have a legal basis for the notes. Again, consent is one but it is not the only one.
Unless there is enough evidence to convict one or more of the suspects, none will be convicted. In general the argument: We know it must be one of you, but we don't know whch, so we find you all guilty. is not allowed in any non-dictatorial jurisdiction. Just how much evidence is needed for a conviction varies by jurisdiction in theory, and by judge or jury in practice. Also, it would be possible to charge several of the residents with having acted jointly in the crime, but there would still need to be sufficient evidence against each defendant to obtain a conviction.
The US legal system deals with this by punishing you for the crimes of which you are convicted. That is, those where the evidence (whatever it is) convinces a jury that you are guilty beyond reasonable doubt. If there is insufficient evidence, for whatever reason then you would not be convicted. The prosecution can, subject to admissibility, put forward whatever evidence they like in order to convince the jury. This can include a pile of ash that they allege contained convincing and unambiguous evidence of guilt. Of course, if that's all they've got the prosecution would probably be censured by the judge for wasting everybody's time and money, more likely, a prosecutor wouldn't lay charges in the first place. As to punishment for an evidence tampering conviction: you have been convicted of evidence tampering, not drug production so you will be punished for evidence tampering, not drug production. The legislature sets different punishments for these for a reason, possibly a reason known only to them but a reason nevertheless. The judge has discretion to apply anything between the minimum and maximum sentence prescribed. A conviction for evidence tampering in a drug case rather than, say, a jaywalking case, is likely to get a more severe sentence all else being equal.
england-and-wales There is nothing in the criminal law to compel Party X to identify Party Y in this scenario - they are under no legal obligation to contact the police or anyone else, and a witness summons, for example, cannot be served as there is no trial. That said, one option is for the victim to make a complaint to the police for an alleged offence of what is colloquially referred to as &quot;revenge porn&quot; contrary to s.33 of the Criminal Justice and Courts Act 2015: (1) It is an offence for a person to disclose a private sexual photograph or film if the disclosure is made — (a) without the consent of an individual who appears in the photograph or film, and (b) with the intention of causing that individual distress. ... The definitions of &quot;private&quot; and &quot;sexual&quot; may be found at s.35: (2) A photograph or film is “private” if it shows something that is not of a kind ordinarily seen in public. (3) A photograph or film is “sexual” if — (a) it shows all or part of an individual's exposed genitals or pubic area, (b) it shows something that a reasonable person would consider to be sexual because of its nature, or (c) its content, taken as a whole, is such that a reasonable person would consider it to be sexual. The police can then ask Party X to either provide a witness statement identifying Party Y or, if Party X is concerned about unwarranted repercussions etc, to provide this information in confidence and their involvement will be protected as Sensitive Material as per para 2.1(9) and 6.14 of the Criminal Procedure and Investigations Act 1996 Code of Practice.
This sounds like it would fall under the "extreme pornography" part of the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008. Section 63: (7) An image falls within this subsection if it portrays, in an explicit and realistic way, any of the following— (b) an act which results, or is likely to result, in serious injury to a person's anus, breasts or genitals, and a reasonable person looking at the image would think that any such person or animal was real. (7A) An image falls within this subsection if it portrays, in an explicit and realistic way, either of the following— (b) an act which involves the non-consensual sexual penetration of a person's vagina or anus by another with a part of the other person's body or anything else, and a reasonable person looking at the image would think that the persons were real. What you describe would likely result in serious injury to the victim, and the video appears to be non-consensual. Note that the actual origin is not relevant; if the videos were actually a brilliant piece of special effects and no anuses were harmed that gets you nowhere. The only thing that matters is what a "reasonable person" looking at the videos would have thought. Context might make a difference; if the videos were made by an identifiable company then a reasonable person might assume the producers would have at least obtained consent and complied with their local laws about safety. OTOH if they look like they were filmed on someone's phone and downloaded from some sketchy file-sharing site then a jury is likely to see this as suggesting to the "reasonable person" that the acts shown were real and non-consensual. Edit in response to comment: The law in question says 'An image is “pornographic” if it is of such a nature that it must reasonably be assumed to have been produced solely or principally for the purpose of sexual arousal'. So it can still be porn even if it wasn't filmed consensually. If "pornography" could only refer to consensual images then the prosecution would need to obtain evidence of the consent or otherwise of the participants. This might be impossible if a participant is dead or cannot be identified. Also the definition above matches both the dictionary definition and most people's idea of what makes something "porn"; the point of porn is sexual arousal.