Though courts have long admitted videotaped evidence, no dramatic abuse has ever come to light, notes Stephen Gillers of the New York University Law School. The usual problem is not alteration but selective taping. What isn’t captured on videotape can obviously cast a very different light on what is. Yanked out of context, something as innocuous as a loan repayment may look like a bribe. A statement made under duress may seem an open confession. “It’s hard to find a case where someone’s videotaped actions are completely neutralized by what happens off-tape,” says Thomas Puccio, the former federal prosecutor who spearheaded the famous Abscam investigation. “But a good advocate will harp on that possibility.”
With current technology, videotape is almost as easy to edit as it is to shoot. An amateur can easily put a spin on recorded events by transferring only selected images from an original onto a second tape. No actual splicing is required–the transfers are all made electronically–but even an untrained eye can often spot the cuts. Missing segments are especially easy to detect if a tape contains a frame-by-frame time bar. The FBI used one during its sting of former Washington, D.C., mayor Marion Barry, for example; but time bars are not legally required.
Editing is kid stuff compared with the games professionals play. “Anything that can be retouched on a photograph can be retouched on videotape,” says Peggy Fussell, a Dallas-based animator who helps ad agencies alter the look of television commercials. But the process is complicated. Altering even one second of videotape requires doctoring each of the 30 frames it contains and can cost up to $4,000. Moreover, many of the best tricks require the subject’s cooperation. “You couldn’t just film somebody walking down the street and put them into another situation,” Fussell says. Turning a mere pedestrian into a flasher or a slasher would be harder still.
Lab technicians can easily determine whether a tape was shot in a given camera, whether it contains material transferred from other tapes and whether its images have been altered. Lab analysis can also clarify the meaning of a garbled or damaged tape. Linda M. Sheer, a senior lab technician with the Motion Picture Association of America’s anti-piracy unit, recalls a spy case that hinged on a muffled audiotape in which the accused supposedly said, “I’m going to meet the Russians.” Technicians discovered that the gentleman was not dashing off to sell state secrets. He was “going to beat the rush hour.”
