How are pictures used in court when it is getting increasingly getting easier to alter them
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While most of this is true with respect to evidence in general, photos and videos are slightly different. You can sponsor such evidence through a witness who will testify that the video or picture accurately depicts how that place appeared at the time. They do not have to have taken the picture, nor does the picture have to be from the exact time of the events in question.
A couple examples: a witness to a murder is shown a picture of the victim lying on the ground covered in blood. The picture was taken by police or medical examiner or something. You don’t have to have the photographer testify in court that they took the picture, you can just have the eyewitness testify that they saw the victim lying on the ground and that the picture accurately depicts how the victim appeared at the time.
Second example: the witness is involved in a car accident. An insurance investigator goes to the scene of the accident a month later and takes a picture of the intersection. You don’t need to call the investigator as a witness, you just ask the person who was in the accident whether the picture accurately depicts how the intersection appeared on the day of the accident. Assuming nothing major happened to the intersection in the month between the accident and when the picture was taken, the witness’ testimony is sufficient to authenticate and admit the picture.
The crazy thing is, you could actually admit an altered picture if the witness can testify that the picture accurately depicts the scene and the proponent of the evidence identifies how the picture was altered. Take our second example, with the car accident. Say you digitally altered the photo to add in a car to the intersection where there was a car on the day of the accident. The witness could testify that the digitally added car appears how it did at the time of the accident and the altered photo could then be admitted.
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