How do you get photos and other evidence into court?

Pictures and videos are almost a part of any legal course. Pictures, videos and other electronic data will help you win your case.

So what’s the big deal? Can’t we just bring photographs into court?

There are different rules in every court.Massachusetts,New Hampshire and every other state has their own rules on what’s permissible. Not only that, but there are federal rules as well.The rules are different no matter where you go. So it’s not quite as simple as you might think.

Why is it so different from state to state? And what makes it so that electronic evidence would be possible to view in court?

 Well, to dig down into the details of every single state and every single court rule we’d be here all day.

The are some general things that you have to prove to get a photograph admitted into court.

The first thing, obviously, is whether the photograph is relevant.

I mean, you can’t show a picture of a car if you’re talking about a boat. 

So what is relevance? The legal definition of relevance is anything that tends to make it a fact that’s at issue in the case more likely or less likely.

Sounds simple, right? So what’s the big deal about something being relevant and how can you prove that something is relevant? Relevance involves two steps. I already told you about the first step. The second step involves weighing several factors. The court may exclude relevant evidence if its probative value is substantially outweighed by a danger of one or more of the following:

• Unfair prejudice,
• Confusing the issues,
• Misleading the jury,
• Undue delay,
• Wasting time
• Needlessly presenting cumulative evidence.

What does that mean?

If something is relevant, that might be fine for the court. But if it has a prejudicial effect, then it could bias the jury.

Let me give you an example:

There was a criminal case in Massachusetts in  which a young woman had been assaulted and killed and stuffed in the trunk of a car, and the defendant was convicted of murdering the young woman. And one of his issues on the appeal was that this was very prejudicial to the jury to actually see the body of the woman stuffed in the trunk of the car. And it went all the way up to the appeals court in Massachusetts. And the appeals court said, well, you know what? Every time we have a criminal case, we can’t keep out the evidence just because it is gruesome. So in that case, the court said we’re going to allow that buy abilify, even though the defendant said it was very prejudicial or even inflammatory and they allowed that evidence to go in.

 On the other hand…

There was a New Hampshire case personal injury case where the opposite happened. There was a slip and fall and the plaintiff had come down some stairs. He stepped on the snow and underneath the snow was ice. And after the snow had melted, his attorney went and took pictures. Some of the pictures were kept out, not because the snow had all melted, but because these were closeups that showed that the down spout coming down from the roof was a little bit too close to the steps. The theory being that the snow and ice would melt overnight and it would pull up at the bottom of the stairs and then freeze. But the real reason that the court actually kept some not all of those photographs out was because the paint was actually chipped on the down spout. And the court said that’s going a little bit far. Maybe the jury could infer from that that the guy wasn’t keeping up the property. So in that case, the court said that’s really very prejudicial.  This went all the way up to the New Hampshire Supreme Court

Are attorneys often able to argue that something may be prejudicial?

Absolutely. Earlier, we talked about how a photograph has to be relevant. That sounds simple, but there are people that will try and keep your photographs out of the case. And as a personal injury attorney, I will always take photographs of a car of someone who’s been injured or that kind of thing. But the insurance defense attorneys will always, almost always object to your photographs. In fact, they have a website that explains all of that.

One needs to evaluate if the photographs are an accurate representation for what the party seeks to show or argue through the image.

• Was the photo taking a meaningful time?
• Does it provoke an emotional response, i.e. sympathy for the victim?
• Is it cumulative evidence?
• No matter what we try to do as personal injury attorneys, the insurance defense people, nine times out of ten are going to argue to keep that evidence out of court

The first rule is relevancy. It has to be relevant and we have to balance whether the probative value of the evidence is not outweighed by substantial prejudice.

The second rule is authentication.

What authentication means is that it’s fair and accurate representation of what it needs to show.  That’s pretty simple in terms of a simple photograph, is it a fair and accurate representation? But if we’re talking about more video evidence or if we’re talking about electronic evidence, you know, the question becomes where did it come from? Something like a call log is evidence. And to authenticate that, you actually need another witness.

Are you able to submit electronic evidence or do you need to get things printed out?

That depends on what court you’re in. Every court is different. In local courts sometimes you actually need paper. The federal courts are all electronic. I was recently at a trial where we were trying a case and the attorney came in simply with his laptop and didn’t have a briefcase.

Federal courts, by and large, are set up for totally, completely electronic. The state courts are coming along. If you’re in small claims court, it’s probably okay to bring paper. But they’re all different and it changes.

For more blogposts like this one, check out attorney-myers.com. If you or a loved one have suffered an injury and are seeking legal representation, contact us.

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