The camera & the law

By Bert Samuels, Contributor

I SAT in the courtroom wondering what defence was going to be relied on by a young man charged for the armed robbery of a grocery store. The court was The Old Bailey in Westminster, England. I was visiting and took a day off to see how the modern system in England was operating.

The trial was by jury. In Jamaica we abolished the jury system for similar gun-related offences a quarter-century ago. Each member of the jury had a photo album with them. They were taken photo by photo by the prosecutor. Each photograph, 30 of them in all, had vivid colour photographs of the defendant and his partners in crime from their arrival with guns to their departure with the goods robbed by them.

As I sat there eager to hear his defence I finally learnt that he was relying on the defence of duress. The jury was not convinced that he was forced by the others to participate in the crime so they returned a verdict of 'guilty'. I said to myself, technology had long last caught up with crime.

I learnt after the case that the other men in the robbery (three of them) pleaded guilty so they did not go to trial. I learnt further that cameras were positioned, by the state, at most major intersections at places frequented by the public. Further, cameras were a regular part of the fixtures in many stores. Interestingly during my stay in London, a camera caught a uniformed police officer kicking and boxing a young man who was shown on the evening news, not to have provoked the officer in any way. I wondered again to myself what will his defence be!

The likelihood of apprehension is one of the most important factors which act as a deterrent to crime. There are few more compelling ways to catch the criminal than a photograph or a videotape view of him at the crime scene. Humans are often prepared to say they saw when in truth they only heard or were close by but not eye-see witnesses. They are often motivated by some interest in having the defendant convicted be it due to a family member or friend being the victim. The camera has no motive other than truth.

The FBI had no interest in relying on the frailty of human recollection at the crime scene of the Oklahoma bombing. They soon hit the jackpot after an early and thorough search of the surrounding area produced a chassis number on a piece of twisted car part. The trace led to the manufacturers, thereafter to the purchasers and finally to Timothy McVeigh who rented it from the purchasers, a rental company.

All of the above is telling us that one of the ways forward is to manipulate technology to detect crime. The system has always strived not to have the wrong man convicted. The eye of the camera is a deterrent to criminal conduct from civilian or law enforcement officers themselves. It must be for the good of us all to employ this technology to seriously reduce crime, shorten trials shorten the risk of a wrong conviction and keep all of us more in line.

The English too have employed the use of technology long before trial as part of the criminal justice system. Confessions by suspects are tape-recorded. We have moved a great step forward where a poor suspect can have at the expense of the state, a lawyer to give advice and to be present at the taking of a confession by the police. I wish to personally commend the Minister of Justice for this long overdue directive.

The jury can have a closer picture of the state of the accused during the confession to test what reliance, if any, can be placed on it.

A video recording may be the cost of a single bullet these days.

Bert Samuels is an attorney-at-law.

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