Issues of Admission

As forensic animation and other technical visualizations have become more commonly used, courts have reviewed the issues of admissibility and have increasingly accepted them as valid forms of demonstrative evidence, as long as certain guidelines are met.   Fearless Eye advises our clients of these issues from the outset of a case to help ensure the highest success rate for admission of our designs.  Because of this, in our 14-year history, Fearless Eye has enjoyed a near perfect success rate for admission of demonstrative evidence.

Cases frequently cited for guidelines have yielded the following 4-point system:

Step 1: Assess Authenticity

Be prepared to offer testimony from a witness familiar with the preparation of the animation and the data on which it was based.

Step 2: Establish Relevance

"An animation is relevant when it has a direct bearing upon and tends to establish or make more or less probable the matter in controversy."  Clark v. Cantrell (529 S.E.2d 528, S.C. 2000

Step 3: Establish Accuracy

While an animation need not be exact in every detail, important technical elements must be very similar to the descriptions offered by expert testimony and corroborative to the data being visualized. Such data is wide ranging and may include representations of distances, velocities, vector paths, accepted medical procedural standards, engineering and architectural structural standards as well as conceptual representations of electronic data and patent issues, to name just a few.

Step 4: Establish Probative Value

A forensic animation’s probative value should substantially outweigh the danger of unfair prejudice, confusing the issues or misleading the jury, and should strive to be as conservative as possible in the depiction of potentially emotionally charged events.

Additional Guidelines:

Disclosure Timeliness:  The proponent of the animation should try to ensure a reasonable submission time prior to trial to allow both parties to consider issues of fair and accurate representation.

Jury Instructions: The trial court should give a cautionary instruction that the animation represents the opinions of the proponent; their expert witnesses data or eyewitnesses versions of events.