LAWFARE by Roger Parloff 2/28/2022
The First Trial of a Capitol Riot Defendant: A Shock-and-Awe Campaign of Video, Audio, and Other Digital Evidence
“The revolution will not be televised,” Gil Scott Heron said. Well, maybe not. But the Jan. 6 insurrection sure was.
On Monday, when Capitol riot defendant Guy Reffitt, of Wylie, Texas, goes to trial before a federal jury in Washington, D.C., prosecutors plan to present a shock-and-awe campaign of video, audio, and other digital evidence. Reffitt is the first of the more than 750 Capitol siege defendants to put the government to its proof. About 215 defendants have already pleaded guilty.
Reffitt, 49, faces five felony charges, two of which carry maximum terms of up to 20 years in prison. He has been incarcerated since his arrest on Jan. 19, 2021. Judge Dabney Friedrich of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia will preside over his trial.
To mount their case, prosecutors plan to show the jurors, among other things, an array of video clips displaying the defendant’s allegedly criminal conduct on the Capitol’s West Terrace that day, according to their exhibit and witness lists. Those videos were shot by Reuters; by Fox News; by an outfit called News2Share; by a freelance journalist named Emily Molli; by the holder of a smartphone whom the prosecution hasn’t yet identified; and by at least four closed-circuit surveillance cameras maintained by the U.S. Capitol Police on Capitol grounds.
On top of that, prosecutors, led by assistant U.S. attorneys Jeffrey Nestler and Risa Berkower, expect to show excerpts from 48 minutes of MP4 footage that the defendant himself generated from a Kodak Orbit 360 videocamera he wore on his helmet. When these files are loaded into an appropriate player, images can be panned and rotated 360 degrees at the viewers’ will.
And that’s just the start. As I’ll detail below, prosecutors plan to use many additional audio, video, and text files capturing Reffitt’s actions and words.
More:
https://www.lawfareblog.com/first-trial-capitol-riot-defendant-shock-and-awe-campaign-video-audio-and-other-digital-evidence
