Video of tragic accident

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I don't want to get into a debate about whether the CoP or the father or anyone else may have criminal culpability, but I do see a real issue with allowing the video to be seen.

It's well established that relevant evidence may nonetheless be excluded if the potential of prejudice is greater than the probative value of the proposed evidence. For example, Rule 403 of the Federal Rules of Evidence provides:

"Although relevant, evidence may be excluded if its probative value is substantially outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice, confusion of the issues, or misleading the jury, or by considerations of undue delay, waste of time, or needless presentation of cumulative evidence."

Allowing the video is the sort of trial court evidentiary ruling that is likely to become one of the issues for the court of appeal if there's a conviction.
 
I agree that the emotional impact of evidence may prejudice a jury. At the same time if the events that lead to the death are clearly recorded and I as a juror was prevented from seeing them I would have a hard time convicting with the knowledge that pertinent evidence was withheld.

The video should be shown. Nothing is going to remove the impact of seeing that death but cutting the video to show only up to the instant of the accident and no further will provide the information needed without the post accident emotional nightmare. They are not on trial for what happenned after the shooting, only what happened up to it.
 
Show it all - it's evidence and what happens after the accident is just as important as what happened before. Part of being on a jury is seeing all the evidence - as horrific as it may be.
 
Sefner,

I may well be mistaken, but I believe in most jurisdictions, victim impact statements are solicited at the sentencing stage of the proceedings, not at trial. In other words, a guilty verdict has already been rendered. I agree it would be irrelevant and prejudicial to the defense to introduce such emotional statements during the trial proper.
 
How does showing the aftermath of the incident provide any relavent information? It show emotional impact and loss but nothing regarding the build up to the accident.

Showing a hysterical parent in tears as his child dies will provide no evidence I can see regarding the build up to the event. It would prejudice the jury and provide grounds for appeal.
 
All I know is that I personallyknow a machine gun guy who regularly attends such shows or meets or shoots or whatever they are called. He was slated for that one but somebody pulled some shenanigans and bumped him from his slot. I talked to him after the event. Having been bumped, he didn't attend but he had spoken with several friends who did. I believe the description he gave (based on their reports) was that the whole thing was a fustercluck, and the only surprise was that a few more people weren't killed.

In short, he was retroactively VERY happy that he had been gyped out of his reservation. Apparently, there was plenty of blame to spread around.
 
Children are too small to control a machine gun. This may not be obvious at the start, but it should be obvious now.

I know of one gun club where a machine gunner let a 9 year old girl shoot a MAC-10 in 45 ACP. The girl was unable to control the recoil and the machine gun shot over the backstop. That range was in a very old gravel pit/mine.

Some poor guy, 1500 yards downrange is working on his roof. He gets hit with a 45ACP slug that luckily stays between his skin and inner body.

The Police came to the gun club and confiscated everyone's weapons for analysis.

I don't know the resolution, but their insurance was jacked up and they had to install $100,000 worth of baffles.

Kids are cute and all, but don't give them machine guns to shoot.
 
My son is 8, he has shot his 410 and 22. Would I let him shoot an ouzi? heck no, he wouldnt want to either. I notice he will pick up a larger gun, hold it, then say no I am not ready. He then goes to the 22. Knows his limits. If I let him shoot and he died, I couldnt live with myself. Why would any parent put his kid in jepardy?

I feel for the kid, who knows what he could have done in life.
 
Video Isn't Pertinent Evidence....

...to who's at fault.

Hopefully I'm wrong here but I'd be surprised if the whole showing the grizzly sad shooting itself is about money, not fault, because once again nothing in the video shows fault unless it shows the argument and pressure applied to a
kid trying to say the 8 year old can't shoot a machine gun.

That's the only relevant video is one that showed events that led up to the incident. as one poster pointed out here, nobody needs to have a memory of a kid getting needlessly shot on their memory for the rest of their life.

My guess is that there will be one person on a jury with a clear enough head to place the blame where it belongs before other's lives get damaged. It's a cheap shot on the prosecutor to go after the chief of police and you can bet there's politics behind that one. It's too easy for a prosecutor to have jurists who want someone to pay for a graphically violent incident involving a young kid. Sympathy can be spun toward the father who lost his kid but I have a rather harsh attitude toward that idiot. The only sympathy in me is for a kid who had the misfortune to be born to an idiot. That's what the father needs to be reminded of.

My cousin had her son hit a tree on an ATV that turned him into a comotose vegetable before he died after several months. I was in the unfortunate position of reading her the riot act about how stupid it was of her to let him have one in the first place. She drummed up a veritable array of defenses about how and why she couldn't keep her underaged son from doing what he wanted. My argument was that it was 100% her say as long as he lived in her house. I did the best I could to tell her if he killed himself on it it was on her watch and consequently going to be her fault. She understands that well enough that she's suicidal at times. I wish I'd have gone a bit softer but she knows how I feel about it and I hold her directly responsible, not to mention she didn't set hard rules on a helmet.
 
woodguru...

... if the chief of police left a 15 year old in charge of the machine gun firing range, I'd say that would make him criminally liable for a few charges, including negligent homicide or manslaughter, but starting with allowing a minor unsupervised access to an NFA weapon.

Was the father an idiot? Yes, but again, for all we know the guy knows nothing about firearms.

If I put on a static display at an airport, and let some kid supervise my airplane, and that kid lets somebody else's kid flip a starter switch, and kill somebody else with a propeller, guess who'd be in trouble. Not the kid who hits the switch, since he's a kid; not the kid's father, because he'd have no reason to expect anything unsafe to be allowed to happen (IE battery disconnected, no power source for a start - if he even thinks that far.) Not even the kid left to supervise the aircraft, as a 15 year old has no business doing that, and no real ability (in the vast majority of cases) to do it.

The ultimate responsiblity would be on the person who was supposed to provide a safe and secure display.
 
I've got to go with MLeake on this one. At first I figured that father had to be responsible but the argument of knowledge level makes good sense. Makes me think that the father is as much (maybe more) of a victim than the kid. At least the kid is "just" dead. The father has to LIVE with what happened.
 
I agree that the Promoter (The Chief of Police) is at fault.

So is the father (last I heard, he was up on separate charges). No reasonable man would allow a child to fire a full auto weapon. Full Stop.
 
Well done, markj,

My eight-year-old liked his .410 and even firing an SKS, although that one was a bit heavy for him. Of course, he was supervised like a hawk. He'd done well. He's 15 now, and shoots whatever we have.
 
Where I live, if there's a gun show, you can have guns; and you can have ammo. To put them together while on the premises is illegal. And there definitely isn't any shooting.

8 year old shooting a fully automatic 9mm Uzi sub-machine gun?
This rates as high up on the "Great Idea Scale" as "Substance Addict School Bus Drag Racer".

I don't know how I feel about videos being shown to jury's. I believe it would definitely clear up discrepancies between testimonies regarding "what really happened". But at the same time, a video will only show limited angle, audio, perspective; while I feel all too many people would try and slap the title of "Completely Definitive Evidence" on any footage of a criminal act.

Slippery, those slopes.

~LT
 
I would have to say that the father may be more culpable than the police chief guy. Even if the father were ignorant of guns, the father knows that and would logically have a higher level of alertness and caution in the very dangerous enviroment of a machinegun shoot. A good parent does not acquiesce thier kids safety to someone else ever and especially to a public servant or at a very dangerous place.

Humans would do well to look after thier cubs (sic) with the same tenacity as Grizzly Bears Sows do.
 
I disagree with those who give the father a pass because he wasn't a 'gun expert.'

I don't let my kids do things I'm not convinced are safe. If I don't know about them, I learn about them until I can judge if they are safe. That's it-

Has it ****** my kids off when I wouldn't let them go to local carnivals, because I wasn't convinced the rides were correctly maintained? Sure. Same for going boating with friends whose parents I didn't think were responsible enough, or vacationing with same.

Ultimately, I am the ONLY one responsible for my children. If they're doing something I let them do, it's on me--and only me--to ensure it's safe.

Having said that, I was allowed to shoot a Mac 11 at a young age, race motorcycles and do all sorts of 'dangerous' stuff, because my dad knew me, knew what I was doing and knew that, for us, it was safe. Anyone who lets their kid do something because a flyer on a wall said it was safe deserves full responsibility for what follows, IMHO.


Larry
 
I must agree with woodguru.

In this specific instance I don't see how the video of the event establishes relative 'fault' or responsibility.

If the purpose of the court case is to establish "who is at fault", or relative negligence or culpability, the video of the event itself occurring is unlikely to be explanitive - because the event is not being debated. No one questions what occurred, or even particularly how it occurred.

What I understand is at issue is why it was allowed to occur - and whose decisions or lack thereof were directly or indirectly negligent in allowing it to occur - and these pre-event decisions are unlikely to be revealed by the video (unless of course the video captures the pre-event reluctance of the instructor to allow the child to shoot, and any insistence by the father than he do so against his better judgement, etc).

So unless video of the event itself reveals pre-event causality or negligence, showing it would appear to be more emotionally provocative than anything more constructive to the case.

JMHO. YMMV.
 
QUESTION.

The article states that the law says a machine gun cannot be furnished to the child (duh), however, it also says that the father chose that small uzi because he thought it better suited his small son (wow). SO, my question is, unless the 8 year old walked up and got the gun himself, the gun would have to have been furnished to the FATHER, who then and went and made the decision to pass it along to his kid to try out. In which case the blame would be placed on the father, be it legally or morally, correct? I know the whole story isnt in that one article, so this would be pure speculation based on the little info. we have.


Not an immediate death, either. That audio must be absolutely horrifying. I do not think either should be played for the Jury. They know the child shot and killed himself. The video and aftermath with the screaming and praying is to evoke emotion- which it undoubtedly will, as opposed to the laws and procedures that were broken.


Also, not simply referring to this case, but an accident is sometimes an accident, how horrible it may be, but jailtime isnt always the justice.
 
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A good parent does not acquiesce thier kids safety to someone else ever and especially to a public servant or at a very dangerous place.
Click to expand...

I got news for you, good parents do that every day. Your kids are at school where their safety is now the responsibility of the school. They go to the doctor. My son was less than 4 moths old when he was hospitalized for borderline pneumonia and I wasn't even allowed in the hospital near him because of my own health issues which laid me up.

There are NRA sponsored shooting clinics for children run near me where you entrust your child to the instructor.

This was the chief of police taking responsibility for assuring a safe environment for a child to handle a gun. He had the defacto title of expert and 99% of the public, most of which never handle guns, legitimately accept that.

You cannot ALWAYS be solely responsible for your child's safety. It scares the hell out of every parent but it is a fact.
 
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