Is film better for the truth?

[jnamia]

It made sense to the judge. He was going to throw out the case against the defendant declaring a mistrial. The judge was also going to hold the prosecutors in contempt of court for their apparent deception.

They submitted as evidence the less sharp video. It was the lower resolution video. It didn't clearly show the defendant protecting himself against a knife attack. So the prosecutor deliberately made the defendant appear more guilty. The clearer version was held back by the prosecutors that showed the defendant clearly being attacked with a knife giving him the right to protect himself and eventually leading to the jury finding him not guilty.

So truthfulness and accuracy can be life and death issues. Do we really trust the news reports and photos in media? How much of it is just propaganda.

what I think is kind of weird is outrageous photographs that would have graced the front page of a supermarket tabloid you claim are now matters of life and death? your argument still makes absolutely no sense.
regarding the media and news. .. personally I only get my news from theonion.com

 

[benjiboy]

I don't agree with the original poster's premise, I don't think either digital or analogue photography is about "truth", they are both about illusion.

 

[Alex Benjamin]

The WPA/FSA photographers had a script and fabricated their famous photographs too.

Seriously, you can't accuse people of not knowing the history of photography and a few sentences later come up with such a bold generalization—not to mention totally unfounded statement—about Arthur Rothstein, Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, Gordon Parks and the other FSA photographers, this without any proof or reference whatsoever.

Yes, Roy Stricker wanted certain things in particular—plenty of evidence in his correspondance with the photographers, and if you want to call that a "script", go for it. But it's also well documented that most of them went "off script" because they were genuinely interested in documenting what was happening and how people were suffering. By no means were any of these photos "fabricated".

Were some "posed". Sure. Has nothing to do with fabrication, and is certainly not contrary to "truth". Great example is "American Gothic" by Gordon Parks. Is it posed? Of course. But it's the only one like that in the whole series he took of Ella Watson, and the beauty of it is that the way he constructed the composition is a metaphor that powerfully reveals the truth (yeah, it does) of her condition—of the condition of a Black women in America in 1942. A great, truthful, photograph.

 

[Maris]

"It made sense to the judge. He was going to throw out the case against the defendant declaring a mistrial. The judge was also going to hold the prosecutors in contempt of court for their apparent deception."
Alan Edward Klein is arguably right in his observations. I have a parallel example:

My old reliable Mamiya RB67 bears an engraving QP 906. The "QP" stands for Queensland Police and it was indeed a crime scene camera. It seems not to be harmed by all the horrors it recorded.
In previous Queensland law a photograph could be admitted as an exhibit and then it would constitute evidence. But this evidence could be challenged on the grounds that it was not a truthful representation.
It was the responsibility of the police to provide an unbroken verifiable chain of production for the photograph presented. This chain included showing the actual camera used, hence the unique engraved number, the actual negative plus the annotations about its development. And the print itself with all its annotations and certificates.

The working principle was that there existed a proveable one to one correspondence between points in the photograph and points in the crime scene. Furthermore there were no extra meaningful marks in the photo that didn't correspond to the crime scene. The truth of this connection was held to be sufficiently robust to contribute to a conviction under law.

As for the reverse supposition that there were points in the crime scene that were not in the photograph this notion was available to a jury as part of the reasonable doubt principle.

The Queensland police now use digital cameras and the physical connection between the crime scene and the photograph is no longer required. It is sufficient for someone to testify under oath that the picture shown was how things looked at the time. In a sense such a court exhibit has changed from being evidence to becoming testimony. Again, it is up to a jury to weigh this change as contributing to reasonable doubt.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

I don't agree with the original poster's premise, I don't think either digital or analogue photography is about "truth", they are both about illusion.

Certainly, art has been used forever to propogandize the views of those paying the bills for the art. You also see it from the talking heads on news cable shows. Why not photographers? They too slant their photos to what's expected from their bosses. It doesn't matter digital or film. Frankly, viewers have to be alert and unemotional enough to separate the wheat from the chaff, especially when it's news or documentary in nature.

 

[jnamia]

you don't think shooting scripts that Stryker had people use meant they scripted the photographs? in essence the whole operation was like filming of a reality show. Just because it's in a photograph doesn't mean it happened just like it is depicted, people were directed, told what to do sometimes what to wear, where to sit &c they were actors.

https://thirtiesculture.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/strykershootingscripts.pdf

not saying some didn't ad-lib, I'm sure they did, but how often do you think some poor person with a camera in their face was relaxed enough to actually be themselves infront of some stranger hired by the government to show how desperate their situation was? (having worked as a press photographer in my past I would say they people were not at ease, they never are, and most people whether they admit it or not, do not like having their photograph taken by strangers). I've read that some people felt they were exploited, not sure if that is myth or not but who knows, that's another side of this "truth" ... it's no different than avedon did in his american west series I don't think the bee keeper had bees on them all the time, and from what I understand some of his subjects feel like they were exploited as well...
sure it is a metaphor / illusion / dream related to the human condition, I'm not saying these things aren't that, what I am saying is they are not really "the truth" they are a made up version of the truth invented for effect, made for archives, art, made for government propaganda made for education made to get funding and help. doesn't mean they aren't powerful images, I never said anything about that. if these photographs were made with a digital camera would they have any less power, would they have the same weight and meaning, or would people who despise digital cameras and its cheapening of the ability of retouching the flaws of an image, cry foul and they are just hoaxes foisted upon the public? Are Karsh's portraits any less "hoaxes". I think he even drew in the smoke in some of the portraits with his subjects smoking, and they were all heavily retouched like most all portraits are.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

"It made sense to the judge. He was going to throw out the case against the defendant declaring a mistrial. The judge was also going to hold the prosecutors in contempt of court for their apparent deception."
Alan Edward Klein is arguably right in his observations. I have a parallel example:

My old reliable Mamiya RB67 bears an engraving QP 906. The "QP" stands for Queensland Police and it was indeed a crime scene camera. It seems not to be harmed by all the horrors it recorded.
In previous Queensland law a photograph could be admitted as an exhibit and then it would constitute evidence. But this evidence could be challenged on the grounds that it was not a truthful representation.
It was the responsibility of the police to provide an unbroken verifiable chain of production for the photograph presented. This chain included showing the actual camera used, hence the unique engraved number, the actual negative plus the annotations about its development. And the print itself with all its annotations and certificates.

The working principle was that there existed a proveable one to one correspondence between points in the photograph and points in the crime scene. Furthermore there were no extra meaningful marks in the photo that didn't correspond to the crime scene. The truth of this connection was held to be sufficiently robust to contribute to a conviction under law.

As for the reverse supposition that there were points in the crime scene that were not in the photograph this notion was available to a jury as part of the reasonable doubt principle.

The Queensland police now use digital cameras and the physical connection between the crime scene and the photograph is no longer required. It is sufficient for someone to testify under oath that the picture shown was how things looked at the time. In a sense such a court exhibit has changed from being evidence to becoming testimony. Again, it is up to a jury to weigh this change as contributing to reasonable doubt.

Good points. I bet the first question asked of the witness testifying about the photo is, "Was anything added to or subtracted from the picture".

 

[TheFlyingCamera]

Seriously, you can't accuse people of not knowing the history of photography and a few sentences later come up with such a bold generalization—not to mention totally unfounded statement—about Arthur Rothstein, Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, Gordon Parks and the other FSA photographers, this without any proof or reference whatsoever.

Yes, Roy Stricker wanted certain things in particular—plenty of evidence in his correspondance with the photographers, and if you want to call that a "script", go for it. But it's also well documented that most of them went "off script" because they were genuinely interested in documenting what was happening and how people were suffering. By no means were any of these photos "fabricated".

Were some "posed". Sure. Has nothing to do with fabrication, and is certainly not contrary to "truth". Great example is "American Gothic" by Gordon Parks. Is it posed? Of course. But it's the only one like that in the whole series he took of Ella Watson, and the beauty of it is that the way he constructed the composition is a metaphor that powerfully reveals the truth (yeah, it does) of her condition—of the condition of a Black women in America in 1942. A great, truthful, photograph.

But if he made that photograph with a digital camera, would it have been any less 'truthful' about the condition of African-American people in 1942? No. Or if he made that photograph today, with a digital camera, it would still be an accurate metaphor for the condition of many African-Americans today.

 

[TheFlyingCamera]

I don't think film or digital is the question. It's really the statement from the photographer that assures reliability and accurate presentations. Often there's no way for the viewer to determine these things independently.

When I oversaw construction projects for the building owners, I would use either film cameras or more often Polaroid cameras. When digital came along, everyone switched to digital cameras. When cameras were added to iPads and cellphones, they often became the instruments of recording truth-telling. Often these photos "proved" that work was done and done correctly. You can't review hidden work that was done underground or hidden behind walls after the construction is completed.

So good progress photographs that accurately reflect the construction as it was done often becomes extremely important. Of course, both sides took pictures. Since I represented the building owner, the contractor didn't trust just my pictures. So they would take their own to prove their side.

So you're distilling all photography down into evidentiary photographs made for the purpose of proving a claim in a court of law. That's one tiny subset of all photographs, and to apply the requirements for that subset of photographs to all photographs being made, and by extension make a moral claim about the nature of photography based on a particular technology, that's ludicrous. You could argue that a film based photograph is less truthful than a glass plate photograph because the medium is flexible and more subject to dimensional change/distortion. And you could also argue that a wet collodion negative (and any subsequent technological evolutions) is less truthful than a daguerreotype because they lack the resolving power of a daguerreotype (there's an article from the New York Times a few years back about a daguerreotype taken of Cincinnati where a clock face that is 1mm in diameter on the plate, when viewed under magnification, can be read to tell the time at the moment the photograph was taken). But all those arguments would be fallacious because the spectral sensitivity of all earlier media is deficient to some degree or other. Digital is arguably the most color-accurate photographic medium yet invented. And, done properly, I can copy and reproduce that digital image ad infinitum without degradation or loss.

Yes, photography offers a high (in some cases extremely high) degree of verisimilitude. Because it is capable of providing an illusion of similarity to the subject photographed does not mean it is truthful. A photograph is a two-dimensional representation of a three-dimensional object, using materials artificially arranged to represent the object photographed. If I photograph a granite boulder, is the boulder in the photograph made of granite, or is it made of a thin layer of pigmented dyes whose intensity in the paper is relative to the responsiveness to light of some intermediate object?

 

[TheFlyingCamera]

If film were so inherently more truthful as a medium by its very nature, then why don't we use Holgas or pinhole cameras for police evidence photographs? If the nature of FILM is so inherently more truthful, then anything recorded on film should be privileged over anything recorded digitally.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

So you're distilling all photography down into evidentiary photographs made for the purpose of proving a claim in a court of law. That's one tiny subset of all photographs, and to apply the requirements for that subset of photographs to all photographs being made, and by extension make a moral claim about the nature of photography based on a particular technology, that's ludicrous. You could argue that a film based photograph is less truthful than a glass plate photograph because the medium is flexible and more subject to dimensional change/distortion. And you could also argue that a wet collodion negative (and any subsequent technological evolutions) is less truthful than a daguerreotype because they lack the resolving power of a daguerreotype (there's an article from the New York Times a few years back about a daguerreotype taken of Cincinnati where a clock face that is 1mm in diameter on the plate, when viewed under magnification, can be read to tell the time at the moment the photograph was taken). But all those arguments would be fallacious because the spectral sensitivity of all earlier media is deficient to some degree or other. Digital is arguably the most color-accurate photographic medium yet invented. And, done properly, I can copy and reproduce that digital image ad infinitum without degradation or loss.

Yes, photography offers a high (in some cases extremely high) degree of verisimilitude. Because it is capable of providing an illusion of similarity to the subject photographed does not mean it is truthful. A photograph is a two-dimensional representation of a three-dimensional object, using materials artificially arranged to represent the object photographed. If I photograph a granite boulder, is the boulder in the photograph made of granite, or is it made of a thin layer of pigmented dyes whose intensity in the paper is relative to the responsiveness to light of some intermediate object?

If you added or deleted something from the original scene, then its depiction is arguably deficient.

Let's leave aside the moral questions, and legal ones regarding documentary photos for courts. If photography continues with photos being messaged as much as they are, then no one will bother using a camera. They'll let their computers and AI produce the best photos. We will go from photography with a camera to image making with a computer.

They're not the same.

 

[TheFlyingCamera]

If you added or deleted something from the original scene, then its depiction is arguably deficient.

Let's leave aside the moral questions, and legal ones regarding documentary photos for courts. If photography continues with photos being messaged as much as they are, then no one will bother using a camera. They'll let their computers and AI produce the best photos. We will go from photography with a camera to image making with a computer.

They're not the same.

You don't address any of my questions to you about your position.

Your point about using AI to create images replacing using cameras is a personal anxiety of yours, and really has no bearing on the truth or lack thereof of a photograph. I know that my ability and desire to keep using film-based image making tools is not influenced by the fact that some other people may use other tools to make images that are meaningful to them, or that they will find meaning in the use of those tools. Your anxiety over tools has no bearing on the truth or lack thereof of a photograph. If you want to use the word truth, you can't leave aside moral questions because "truth" is a word loaded with moral import.

 

[Alex Benjamin]

But if he made that photograph with a digital camera, would it have been any less 'truthful' about the condition of African-American people in 1942? No. Or if he made that photograph today, with a digital camera, it would still be an accurate metaphor for the condition of many African-Americans today.

Of course. I wasn't in any way implying it wouldn't. Gordon Parks could have made all his photos with a digital camera, I couldn't care less, he'd still be the great photographer he was. I find the whole "film vs digital" aspect of this thread extremely tedious—photographers have cheated with film, photographers have cheated with digital: this is an ethical question, not a gear question, and to make it so is to miss the point totally.

 

[MattKing]

Good points. I bet the first question asked of the witness testifying about the photo is, "Was anything added to or subtracted from the picture".

The first and only really important question one ever asks of a photographic witness is whether the photograph accurately represents the scene that was photographed. The only time judges care about the technical issues is when there is no human being available to testify about what the photograph is being used to communicate.
if you have something like a traffic camera image, then there are circumstances where you can use the photograph as evidence itself. That possibility exists only because of statutes that provide for that exception to the general rule that the sort of hearsay evidence that photographs provide is not admissible. In that special statutory situation, you need evidence about how the photograph was made.
The same applies to situations where someone notices later something in a photograph that wasn’t noticed by those who were there at the time.
But otherwise, photographs are not admissible by themselves as proof of any sort of truth. They are admissible as demonstrative evidence - they serve to clarify the actual probative evidence given by people.
I’ve appeared in as legal counsel in both superior and lower Courts and made great use of photographs to support cases. But if I didn’t have flesh and blood people giving the sort of evidence that courts do accept, the judges would not have admitted as evidence the photographs themselves.

 

[BMbikerider]

With some very narrow statutory exceptions (e.g. automatic traffic cameras), photographs alone are not admissible as probative evidence in our courts of law.
They are, however, relied upon heavily as demonstrative evidence.
Essentially, in court, they aren't seen as the score, they are seen as the performance.
Where have I heard that before?

In UK photographs from either source are admissible providing:- If the photographs were produced from a film negative the original negatives must be available to be produced and inspected by the defence if they required. A statement must also be produced by the photographer that the negatives were under his control from start to finish and were completely un retouched. If for any reason this evidential train is broken, the person who takes over must also give the evidence to prove it was the same negatives he/she received and was in control of them until court production. I cannot recall one instance where this has ever been successfully challenged where the evidence chain is intact..

If the photographs are from a digital record there must be a tamper proof electronic record of any processing from the record on a memory card, tape or disc or elsewhere to the production of the finished print. This has become the norm.

I saw this in action pre 2000 even when digital was in it's infancy, where an apparently 'subject free' scene taken at night by a security camera, where there was virtually no usable light It was processed automatically by what was then a quite sophisticated machine about the size of a tall larder fridge freezer to show two men fighting and one of them actually stabbing the other. The evidential proof presented to the court (apart from pictures) was in a print out like a till roll about 11 feet long This showed the individual steps (in computer speak) taken by the machine's processor to get a usable image for production in court. The machine operator had to individually state in court what each step showed. This accompanied the finished images into evidence and seal a conviction.

 

[jnamia]

Of course. I wasn't in any way implying it wouldn't. Gordon Parks could have made all his photos with a digital camera, I couldn't care less, he'd still be the great photographer he was. I find the whole "film vs digital" aspect of this thread extremely tedious—photographers have cheated with film, photographers have cheated with digital: this is an ethical question, not a gear question, and to make it so is to miss the point totally.

Exactly !
you aren't kidding about tedious. LOL
I mean for nearly 2 decades the same bull$hit arguments and marginalizing insults

maybe I'm part of a minority, but I can't imagine someone just "believing" things they are told / see / read without verifying any of it is true. I mean do people really think Whoopi Goldberg bathes in a bathtub full of milk or that beekeepers always have 100s of bees crawling over their bodies all the time ( and they beekeepers almost nude? or that people drink champagne on a beach watching the sun set holding hands in matching footed bathtubs, or you know fast food is really that good ?
or that 500 firemen came out of a hole at "ground zero" after 6 weeks, and when they got to the surface they all danced a jig in the street .. maybe this stuff can and does happen? I mean I've seen and experienced some strange stuff in my lifetime that I know happened but unbelievable so unbelievable I don't usually talk about in public very often and even though I had a FILM camera and documented what happened I'm told all sorts of "explanations" for what happened ...

 

[TheFlyingCamera]

Of course. I wasn't in any way implying it wouldn't. Gordon Parks could have made all his photos with a digital camera, I couldn't care less, he'd still be the great photographer he was. I find the whole "film vs digital" aspect of this thread extremely tedious—photographers have cheated with film, photographers have cheated with digital: this is an ethical question, not a gear question, and to make it so is to miss the point totally.

And it's only an ethical question in certain circumstances - i.e. if you are presenting the image as having evidentiary value. But inserting a better sky or removing power lines/telephone poles that are ugly in an image that serves the image creator as a memento of a place the way they saw it in their minds' eye, well, that's nothing.

 

[MattKing]

In UK photographs from either source are admissible providing:- If the photographs were produced from a film negative the original negatives must be available to be produced and inspected by the defence if they required. A statement must also be produced by the photographer that the negatives were under his control from start to finish and were completely un retouched. If for any reason this evidential train is broken, the person who takes over must also give the evidence to prove it was the same negatives he/she received and was in control of them until court production. I cannot recall one instance where this has ever been successfully challenged where the evidence chain is intact..

If the photographs are from a digital record there must be a tamper proof electronic record of any processing from the record on a memory card, tape or disc or elsewhere to the production of the finished print. This has become the norm.

I saw this in action pre 2000 even when digital was in it's infancy, where an apparently 'subject free' scene taken at night by a security camera, where there was virtually no usable light It was processed automatically by what was then a quite sophisticated machine about the size of a tall larder fridge freezer to show two men fighting and one of them actually stabbing the other. The evidential proof presented to the court (apart from pictures) was in a print out like a till roll about 11 feet long This showed the individual steps (in computer speak) taken by the machine's processor to get a usable image for production in court. The machine operator had to individually state in court what each step showed. This accompanied the finished images into evidence and seal a conviction.

All of which flows from statutory provisions enacted for the purpose of dealing with unattended cameras - e.g. the referenced security cameras.
Even then, I expect that practically speaking the evidence probably needs collaboration in the form of evidence about things like the forensics of stab wounds.
Courts don't tend to want to trust "witnesses" (the photographs) that cannot be cross-examined.
I wouldn't have been keen about trying a case where the only evidence available was in the form of an uncorroborated photograph. Something like a breach of bail condition charge, for instance, where the only evidence was a security camera image apparently showing someone where they were not permitted to be.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

You don't address any of my questions to you about your position.

Your point about using AI to create images replacing using cameras is a personal anxiety of yours, and really has no bearing on the truth or lack thereof of a photograph. I know that my ability and desire to keep using film-based image making tools is not influenced by the fact that some other people may use other tools to make images that are meaningful to them, or that they will find meaning in the use of those tools. Your anxiety over tools has no bearing on the truth or lack thereof of a photograph. If you want to use the word truth, you can't leave aside moral questions because "truth" is a word loaded with moral import.

The first and only really important question one ever asks of a photographic witness is whether the photograph accurately represents the scene that was photographed. The only time judges care about the technical issues is when there is no human being available to testify about what the photograph is being used to communicate.
if you have something like a traffic camera image, then there are circumstances where you can use the photograph as evidence itself. That possibility exists only because of statutes that provide for that exception to the general rule that the sort of hearsay evidence that photographs provide is not admissible. In that special statutory situation, you need evidence about how the photograph was made.
The same applies to situations where someone notices later something in a photograph that wasn’t noticed by those who were there at the time.
But otherwise, photographs are not admissible by themselves as proof of any sort of truth. They are admissible as demonstrative evidence - they serve to clarify the actual probative evidence given by people.
I’ve appeared in as legal counsel in both superior and lower Courts and made great use of photographs to support cases. But if I didn’t have flesh and blood people giving the sort of evidence that courts do accept, the judges would not have admitted as evidence the photographs themselves.

This judge disagreed with you.

Rittenhouse lawyers ask judge to declare mistrial over video

Kyle Rittenhouse's attorneys asked the judge to declare a mistrial even as the jury in the murder case was deliberating Wednesday, saying the defense received an inferior copy of a potentially crucial video from prosecutors.

www.cnbc.com

Rittenhouse trial judge still baffled by pinch-to-zoom

Prosecutors think he might be using his phone wrong

www.theverge.com

 

[MattKing]

This judge disagreed with you.

Rittenhouse lawyers ask judge to declare mistrial over video

Kyle Rittenhouse's attorneys asked the judge to declare a mistrial even as the jury in the murder case was deliberating Wednesday, saying the defense received an inferior copy of a potentially crucial video from prosecutors.

www.cnbc.com

Rittenhouse trial judge still baffled by pinch-to-zoom

Prosecutors think he might be using his phone wrong

www.theverge.com

No, because that is drone video.
An unattended camera, used in a situation where there is no opportunity for a human witness to testify about how the situation appeared in real life. So the statutory provisions apply.
I would guess that there was conflicting real person evidence about what actually happened, and the jury was hoping to use video evidence to either corroborate or cast doubt on the accuracy of that evidence.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

No, because that is drone video.
An unattended camera, used in a situation where there is no opportunity for a human witness to testify about how the situation appeared in real life. So the statutory provisions apply.
I would guess that there was conflicting real person evidence about what actually happened, and the jury was hoping to use video evidence to either corroborate or cast doubt on the accuracy of that evidence.

Matt, We're missing my point. The judge questioned whether the video had been changed. It was. The prosecutor submitted as evidence a version with less resolution. So it was not clear as to what it showed making it seem the defendant was guilty. When the defendant's lawyers found out there was a better version with a higher resolution that was held back by the prosecutor, they asked the judge to declare a mistrial as the better version clearly showed the defendant was attacked with a knife and he, therefore, defended himself legally. The jury agreed and freed the defendant.

The point is that just changing the resolution after what was originally recorded created a false narrative for the jury. We're not even talking about cloning. This shows just how important it is that editing can change the meaning of a photo or video. Editing cannot be taken lightly. Outside of legal applications, photos are used for propaganda in media. Art or no art, these are important issues that cannot be lightly dismissed. We photographers may take editing as a commonplace practice. But many viewers still believe that photos represent what the camera photographed although that trust is becoming less prevalent in the world today.

 

[MattKing]

Alan - you aren't comprehending what those stories say.
The dispute is about two versions of a drone video - one slightly higher quality than the other - and whether either one should have been allowed as evidence in the first place. The jury ended up not paying attention to the video anyways.
Unfortunately, the jury didn't get to hear from the best witnesses, because he had shot them to death, and their testimony wasn't available.

 

[BMbikerider]

All of which flows from statutory provisions enacted for the purpose of dealing with unattended cameras - e.g. the referenced security cameras.
Even then, I expect that practically speaking the evidence probably needs collaboration in the form of evidence about things like the forensics of stab wounds.
Courts don't tend to want to trust "witnesses" (the photographs) that cannot be cross-examined.
I wouldn't have been keen about trying a case where the only evidence available was in the form of an uncorroborated photograph. Something like a breach of bail condition charge, for instance, where the only evidence was a security camera image apparently showing someone where they were not permitted to be.

You speak from the Canadian aspect, I am in UK! We have different but similar procedures I have experience of presenting photographic evidence in front of a jury and shooting down a defence question about accuracy. So long as the continuation trail is complete and the evidence can be cross referenced then the risk of questioning the accuracy is reduced to virtually nil.

As for forensic evidence about stab wounds that is not in the scope of this thread. That is a totally different matter dealt with outside my scope. What this does show that that either film or digital evidence can hold its own in a court if presented in a straightforward and accurate way, with all the 'T's crossed and all the 'i's dotted.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

Alan - you aren't comprehending what those stories say.
The dispute is about two versions of a drone video - one slightly higher quality than the other - and whether either one should have been allowed as evidence in the first place. The jury ended up not paying attention to the video anyways.
Unfortunately, the jury didn't get to hear from the best witnesses, because he had shot them to death, and their testimony wasn't available.

The dispute was what I explained it to be. The prosecutor submitted a tampered version of the original to prove guilt. The original version proved the defendant's innocence.

 

[MattKing]

The dispute was what I explained it to be. The prosecutor submitted a tampered version of the original to prove guilt. The original version proved the defendant's innocence.

Neither version of the drone video evidence showed what was needed to be shown, in order to support what either the prosecutor or the defence said it supported.
The jury ignored it, and acquitted the accused.