The SD Supreme Court handed down one decision this morning,
holding inter alia:
1) Assault conviction
affirmed, with Court establishing foundational evidentiary requirements for
video from automatic surveillance system
Summary follows:
STATE v. REEVES, 2021 S.D. 64:
Defendant “was convicted and sentenced
for assault by a jail inmate – contact with bodily fluids, simple assault
against an inmate, and threatening a law enforcement officer,” for behavior exhibited at the Minnehaha County
Jail. Over Defendant’s objection as to a
lack of proper evidentiary foundation, the trial court admitted into evidence
video collected from video surveillance system utilized in the jail, a system
which runs continuously. The SD Supreme
Court affirmed and, in so doing, addressed an issue not previously decided by
the Court, to wit:
… the
foundational requirements for admitting video footage under SDCL 19-19-901(a)
when a human operator is not available to testify to the accuracy of the scene
depicted in the video.
This decision reviews approaches utilized by other
jurisdictions and ultimately adopts a “flexible
fact-based rule” described as follows:
[¶19.] The
flexible, fact-based rule we adopt today permits the party offering the
evidence, and the party against whom it is offered, a fair opportunity to
address with the circuit court whether sufficient foundational evidence has
been presented to authenticate a particular photograph or video. If a circuit
court determines that there is adequate foundation for the admissibility of the
video, any further “concerns that the defendant ha[s] regarding the
surveillance procedures, and the method of storing and reproducing the video
material, [are] properly the subject of cross-examination and affect[ ] the
weight, not the admissibility, of the video.” Stangle, 97 A.3d at 639
(quotation marks omitted) (citation omitted).
The Court’s decision is unanimous (5-0), with opinion authored
by Justice Kern.
This decision may be accessed at
http://ujs.sd.gov/Supreme_Court/opinions.aspx .
