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Monday, November 10, 2008
Courts - "Supreme Court Posts Video in Victim Impact Case"
The Blog of Legal Times has this very interesting just-posted entry on the admission of multimedia victim impact presentations. Some quotes:
Today the Supreme Court denied review in two California cases in which defendants claimed that multimedia victim impact presentations prejudiced jurors against them. The California Supreme Court had ruled the presentations admissible. * * *Those who attended the Oct. 28th ICLEF seminar, "Welcome to the 21st Century: An Appellate Perspective" may find this particularly interesting.Justice David Souter, who was in the majority in Payne, would have taken the case, though he did not say why.
Justice John Paul Stevens, a dissenter in Payne, and Justice Stephen Breyer, who was not yet on the Court in 1991, also said they'd have taken up the case. They explained their reasoning, and in an unusual step, they referred to the victim video in the Kelly case and indicated it had been put up on the Court's Web site. * * *
Today's video posting was not the first time the Court has gone multimedia on its Web site. In April 2007, it posted the police video of a high-speed car chase that was important in the Court's resolution of Scott v. Harris, a Section 1983 civil rights case brought by a person severely injured in an accident resulting from the chase.
Posted by Marcia Oddi on November 10, 2008 02:29 PM
Posted to Courts in general