Will judge allow CGI at road rage trial?

Prosecution says simulation will ‘enhance the jury’s understanding and avoid confusion in the presentation of evidence’

WEST CHESTER » Prosecutors on Monday showed a brief snippet of computer generated animation that shows what David Desper could have seen out his passenger window as he confronted Bianca Roberson on the stretch of highway near Route 202 in the moment he allegedly fired a semiautomatic handgun at her car.

Authorities want to use the CGI — a lesser version of what audiences have grown used to seeing in movie theaters — in their case against Desper, who is accused of the road rage death of the popular West Chester area high school senior, who was killed while allegedly jockeying for position with Desper as the two tried to merge on the stretch of Route 100 south.

But defense attorneys representing Desper are objecting, saying that the simulation does not meet the state law concerning the use of such effects because the software engineer who developed it was not given enough information by the prosecution to take all factors involved in the confrontation into account in its creation.

“They are just hypothesizing,” argued attorney Daniel McGarrigle of Media, representing Desper, at the conclusion of the proceed-

ing at which Common Pleas Judge Ann Marie Wheatcraft was asked to allow the prosecution to use the animation in its case. “It is inflammatory

and it’s misleading.”

Assistant District Attorney Christopher Miller, who presented the evidence to Wheatcraft said, however, that he believed the moving pictures fit exactly what courts have ruled can be admissible at trials in such instances.

The programmer who created the imagery did not try to give his own opinion as to what may or may not have happened, only what would have occurred if two cars with two drivers who fit the profiles of Desper and Roberson had met and a gun was pointed from one to

the other.

“We will not say this is exactly what happened,” Miller told Wheatcraft. “It’s simple physics and math.”

In a pre-trial motion filed earlier, the prosecution asked Wheatcraft to allow it to use a computer-generated presentation in the prosecution’s opening statement, its case in chief, and closing argument.

The simulation would include photos of the crime scene, the autopsy, and Roberson, as well as maps, diagrams, evidence charts and a timeline, as well as other elements. The presentation would “enhance the jury’s understanding and avoid confusion in the presentation of evidence,” said Deputy District Attorney Michelle Frei, who is leading the prosecution.

“Even though the simulation would be computer-generated, the material included would be that evidence that the prosecution would enter during the normal course of a trial,” she said

Wheatcraft did not make any ruling on the motion, after hearing testimony from forensic software engineer Hugh Borbidge of DJS Associates of Abington. She has set the trial in the case for September.

Desper, who appeared in court in a rumpled blue dress shirt and gray slacks, did not testify at the hearing. He sat at the defense

table between McGarrigle and co-counsel Mary Elizabeth Welch of Media, his legs shackled and one handcuffed to a leather strap on his waist. He is being held without bail in Chester County Prison.

In his testimony, Borbidge said he used 3-D Studio Max software to create the simulation, using information that Miller had given him. The type of demonstration, he said, had been used in hundreds of court cases he’d been involved with.

What it showed was a view out of a window of a Chevrolet Silverado pickup truck’s right side window, as the driver’s side of a lower Chevrolet Malibu pulls past it. A red line is drawn from the image of a handgun out the widow and into the driver’s compartment of the sedan where a person’s head can be seen.

“Are you going to opine in any way that (the shooting) must have happened this way?” Miller asked. “No,” Borbridge said.

Under questioning from Welch, Borbidge said he had not taken into account witness statements given to him by police, road conditions, or the relative speed of the two vehicles. The video shows the two cars moving in a straight line in relation to one another, which contrasts with what other drivers said they saw just before the shot that killed her was fired —

Roberson’s sedan veering left towards Desper’s in an effort to merge into the right lane of traffic from the shoulder.

It has been about 10 months since Roberson died of a single gunshot wound to the head as she drove on the Route 100 spur in West Goshen the afternoon of June 28 after going shopping for school items as she prepared to go to college at Jacksonville University after her graduation from Bayard Rustin High School.

Desper, 28, of Trainer, is charged with first- and third-degree murder and related charges. He is being held without bail in Chester County Prison, where he has been since his arrest a few days after the shooting after McGarrigle informed police that he was prepared to turn himself in.

The random crime — there is no suggestion that the two had any connection before their fateful encounter — shocked the region, if not the nation, and led to a multi-state manhunt for the driver of a red Chevrolet Silverado pickup seen fleeing the scene in a surveillance video. Roberson’s green Chevrolet Malibu went off the road, down an embankment, and slammed into a tree.

Police initially did not know that Roberson’s death was a homicide until an autopsy concluded that she had been shot.