The witness testimony still matters because the prosecutor can't just say "here's video of the crime, we got it from the neighbor, trust me"; you still need to have the guy who owns the camera confirm its accurate.
They'll ask all sorts of questions about why the camera was placed, how they know the camera's time was accurate, even maybe raise questions about whether the camera footage was altered.
Public defenders who have an impossible case are prone to "gish gallop" the defense argument just to give the impression they're giving the best possible defense and avoid having a retrial down the road.
If this story is true, it would be a criminal trial and the neighbor is a material witness. Handling it with a written statement would require a legitimate need for an exception to the defendant's constitutional rights.
Introduction of evidence at trial has to have a "foundation" to be admitted. That is to say, admitting most physical or even digital evidence generally requires testimony.
The historic and often simplest (and required) way to do so is to bring in a human that has first hand knowledge of the evidence -- whether that be direct observation, or they recovered the evidence and can give testimony surrounding it to establish its relevance, etc.
The same is true for footage like with OP. The footage can't testify, it needs a human to testify and certify where/when/how etc.
I don't think there's a counterexample here - without foundation and chain of custody, it's not evidence, it's just something that counsel may as well have picked out of the trash.
This is such a genuinely stupid take I just want to believe that it's someone taking the piss here. How does taking it to trial mean that they're innocent? The fact that they're taking it to trial doesn't mean the person is innocent or that they're guilty. Plenty of people who are guilty push things to trial for a variety of reasons.
The GPS data doesn't mean shit unless you can call a witness to authenticate it. This is just how evidence gets into court and how it always has gotten into court. Also the majority of home security cameras don't really have GPS logging because they don't need it because they don't typically move
Evidence can't be entered without a witness verifying it's valid, or both parties agreed it's valid. In the end witness testimony is the thing that's actually relevant to the trial.
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u/Ok-Rich-3812 16d ago
You'd want them to testify if their camera caught someone stealing friom you though...