An employee is accused of pushing an individual to the
floor and then kicking him in the hallway leading to the dining room.
There is a surveillance camera in place that contains images of the
purported incident.
What form of evidence is the video most likely to be
in this case?
1.
Testimonial
2.
Documentary
3.
Physical
4.
Demonstrative
Answer:
Most everyone who answered this question incorrectly selected
"Documentary". Certainly, in the most general sense the tape does
"document" something, that is, creates a record to preserve a second
piece of evidence. The question is: What is being preserved? If it is
testimonial evidence, then the answer would be documentary; however, the
images on the surveillance video preserve
images of the location itself, including the spatial
relationship between and among the people and objects at that location.
The images are preserving physical evidence and therefore the correct
answer is demonstrative evidence.
Documentary would be the correct answer if the tape
preserved what a witness communicated about his or her memory of
observations he or she made.