Can the Speed of Video Make Us Look More Innocent or Guilty?

Slow-motion video is often used to show jurors how a possibly criminal event took place, but is this practice fair to the accused?

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works. Hi There,
brain Stuff, Lauren Vogel bomb here. Slow motion video can
make the boring seem exciting and the extraordinary even more incredible.
I'm thinking of everything from Wonder Woman's fight scenes to
epic t Time here. But it turns out that slowing
videos not only amps up the drama of a scene,

(00:23):
it also creates bias in viewers, specifically when it comes
to jury members. In court cases, video footage of crimes
often plays an important role in determining a perpetrator's punishment.
In some trials, jurors may watch slow motion video of
the criminal acting question, supposedly to better analyze the events
that took place, But a group of researchers, writing that

(00:44):
any benefit of video replay should be weighed against its
potentially biasing effects, conducted a study that suggests slow mo
video doesn't always help jurors make well informed decisions. Instead,
the elongated time of the video makes it seem like
the crime took longer to unfold, so jurors are more
likely to perceive the action as intentional. Whether a jury

(01:04):
thinks the crime was premeditated can be the difference between
the second and first degree murder charge, so it's literally
a matter of life and death. This was the case
in the two thousand nine murder trial of John Lewis,
which the researchers used as the basis for the study.
In the trial, the prosecution showed a slow motion video
of Lewis shooting a Philadelphia police officer, and the defense
argued that the stretched time made the act seem premeditated.

(01:27):
The prosecution rebutted by pointing out that the jurors also
saw the video at regular speed. To test whether sloma
video actually increases perception of time and intent, the researchers
conducted for studies. In the first, participants acting as jurors
saw either the video of Lewis slowed down or at
normal speed. In the second, the researchers tested perceived intention

(01:48):
in another scenario an NFL video of a prohibited helmet
to helmet tackle, as well as the effect of video
duration by pausing the video instead of slowing it at
crucial moments. In the third, they tested whether displaying and
mentioning the video's speed decreased bias, and in the fourth,
they had participants watched either the SlowMo version or the
regular video or both to test whether the group's perceptions

(02:11):
would be different. Confirming the researchers hypothesis, showing slowed down
video quadruple to the odds that participants would believe the
shooter guilty of intentional murder before deliberation, partially because of
the increased amount of time that the jurors felt the
dependant had to act. Also, viewers who watched the slow
motion tackle the second study were more likely to think

(02:32):
it was premeditated as well, and pausing the video didn't
change that. For the third study, even though viewers were
repeatedly reminded that it was a slow motion video, that
didn't change the results. They were the same as in
the first study, and the final studies showed that the
viewers who saw only the SloMo version of events were
three point four times more likely to convict than viewers

(02:52):
who only saw the regular version. Viewers who saw both
speeds were one point five times more likely to convict.
This demonstrates that showing both speeds lessons bias, but doesn't
completely eliminate it. The authors admit that the study doesn't
determine the effect of slowed video on the accuracy of
viewers judgment but considering the fact that the Supreme Court
of Pennsylvania ruled the slow MO in Lewis's case admissible

(03:16):
and that Lewis is now on death row despite his appeals,
the results of this study could change how we view
the role of videos in determining criminal sentences, and with
the explosion of police body cameras, surveillance cameras, and smartphone video,
the effective video replaced speed on jurors could have even
more importance in the coming years. Today's episode was written

(03:40):
by Eve's Jeffcote and produced by Tristan McNeil. For more
on this end lots of other criminal topics, visit our
home planet, how stuff Works dot com.