High-definition video sharpens legal judgment

The smoking gun of our times is video footage.

A picture may be worth a thousand words, but Regina Provincial Court Judge Kevin Lang needed only 13 to extol its virtues. “There can be no better evidence than clear videotaped evidence of an incident,” he stated succinctly in a judgment this spring.

At issue was whether or not an inmate at the Regina jail had assaulted a couple of guards. The kerfuffle begun rather innocuously when the inmate, standing on the third tier of a cell unit, was ordered back to Tier 1. A correctional worker took issue with the pace at which the man descended a staircase (although Lang subsequently saw no problem with it) and threatened to confine him to his cell for the day.

In Lang’s words, the “unhappy” inmate instead of going to his cell walked outside to the basketball courts, which is where something happened.

According to Lang, the Crown wasn’t even going to put the video, captured by the jail’s security cameras, into evidence until the defence lawyer balked.

The Crown’s sole witness was the guard the inmate allegedly swung at.

“The videotape told a much different story,” Lang said in his decision. Only four seconds after the guards entered the basketball court, one initially grabbed the inmate’s arm as he shot baskets. Then both guards grabbed the inmate — “applying considerable force to him,” said Lang — as they pushed the man against the wall. In the process, the prisoner’s head went down and his left arm up — either inadvertently or by reflex, said Lang — grazing a guard’s neck.

“The accused appears to be defending or simply sheltering himself from the considerable aggression” by the guards.

About that punch? “It just did not happen,” says Lang.

With the two guards on top of the inmate, one guard’s head collided with the other guard’s face — the same spot where he’d contended the inmate had struck him.

The accused was acquitted but it’s easy to see how, in the absence of that video, there might have been a different outcome.

Quality video and its wide availability have revolutionized the courts. I remember not so many years ago at trials trying to discern shadowy figures in grainy images or at times, wishing for even that much.

Today, with smartphones, home and business security cameras and even trail cams rolling almost anywhere, anytime, it’s tough to escape that candid camera moment.

In a decision last year, it was video captured by a camera in an RCMP holding cell, and not the victim himself — he passed out and had no recollection of the incident — that proved he’d been sexually assaulted by a cell mate.

Other cases in recent years also reference the videos captured by police cars — showing, for example, if an accused was red-faced and stumbling around drunkenly at the roadside when asked to give a sample of his breath, or if he was indeed read his rights. In some of those he-said, she-said cases — for example, did an accused swing at an officer first or was it the other way around — video can provide independent evidence.

The Regina Police Service began installing cameras in its vehicles about nine years ago, and today has about 50 equipped with cameras that point outside and inside the vehicle. They record and save automatically when emergency equipment is activated or the rear door is opened. The officer can also activate it.

It was a court decision, unearthed by Saskatoon StarPhoenix reporter Alex MacPherson, that recently revealed the RCMP in Saskatchewan hasn’t been using dashcams for at least a couple of years. The equipment is there, just not operational, until the force sorts out training and storage policies. There’s some glimmer of hope, as the force expects to complete a pilot project this month. It can’t come soon enough.

It’s time the Mounties call, “Action!” and get the cameras rolling.