Legal Question in Criminal Law in Michigan
Can video surveillance be used in court to aid prosecutors in criminal trial?
4 Answers from Attorneys
Yes, of course. Videos are often used in criminal prosecutions.
You can read more at: www.AggressiveCriminalDefense.com
Absolutely! As long as a qualifying witness can lay proper foundation for it to be admitted into evidence as an exhibit, it can be and often is. The problem is that the quality of many surveillance videos, particularly those found in stores and businesses, are cheap and not very good quality and many times are not very useful for that reason. If the quality is good they can be quite helpful to either the prosecution or defense.
Most times the "video surveillance" occurs out in public areas like stores. People have no reasonable expectation that their movements in public are "private", so there is not a constitutional bar to using videos or photos from those places. But some witness will usually have to testify that the scene shown is from a certain date, time and place and it accurately portrays the scene (meaning that it was not doctored).
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