What you need to know
- The Kyle Rittenhouse trial has taken another bizarre turn because of tech.
- The defense has asked for a mistrial because video evidence was sent from iPhone to Android via email.
- They claim the video was compressed as a result and wasn't as clear as the version the state had.
Lawyers for the defense in the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse have filed a motion to dismiss the case against, claiming a mistrial because video evidence sent to the defense via email from an iPhone was compressed.
From CNN:
During a discussion in court this afternoon, prosecutors addressed a motion to dismiss the case by the defense, calling it "factually inaccurate."What is this about: In a motion to dismiss the case filed earlier this week, the defense claimed that, "On November 5, 2021, the fifth day of trial on this case, the prosecution turned over to the defense footage of drone video which captured some of the incident from August 25, 2020. The problem is, the prosecution gave the defense a compressed version of the video."
The motion claims that this means "video provided to the defense was not as clear as the video kept by the state", noting it was only 3.6MB in size as opposed to 11.2MB for the higher resolution version.
So what happened? According to the report prosecutor James Kraus tried to pass on the video to the defense via Apple's AirDrop from an iPhone, however, because the defense attorney had an Android device this obviously didn't work. Instead, the file was emailed as an attachment and inadvertently compressed as a result. The prosecution stated "we did not know that this would occur" and that it "cannot be held responsible", Kraus stating "We didn't compress anything, we didn't change anything." Lawyers for Rittenhouse claimed the fact that the video file had a different name to the original suggested this was not true. According to an expert cited by The Verge, the situation is not normal:
Wisconsin defense attorney Jessa Nicholson Goetz tells The Verge that "it is not normal that video or other electronic evidence is AirDropped to defense counsel in the middle of a trial. That is highly atypical."
The episode is not even the most bizarre tech issue that has faced the trial. Last week the trial judge was fooled by a claim from the defense that pinch-to-zoom on iPad manipulated footage using AI and "logarithms" (presumably they meant algorithms) and that a tablet couldn't be used to display in-court evidence. Instead, a video was played through a Windows laptop plugged into a TV. Whether it is the same video in question in this latest saga has not been stated.
The defense wants the case dismissed, although it has dropped a request for it to be dismissed with prejudice such that it couldn't be tried again. NBC Chicago reports that Judge Schroeder "ruled that the dispute required the reopening of evidence and the testimony of an expert witness." Rittenhouse faces five counts including first-degree reckless homicide, first-degree intentional homicide, and attempted first-degree intentional homicide.
