WITNESS SUPPORT SYSTEMS

Pioneers in the use of IT to support witness testimony, the first such system was designed by HINDSIGHTVR’s Managing Director, for the 1998 Saville Inquiry into the events of Bloody Sunday. Using simple touch screen access and automated screen capture, the solution won major international awards from Europrix, the Society for Computers and Law and BIMA forits ability to allow witnesses to illustrate explain and demonstrate their evidence whilst creating a simultaneous recording of the submission.

Lord Justice Brooke (then Vice President of the Court of Appeal (Civil Division) and Judge in Charge of Modernisation), speaking at the “The Legal and Policy Implications of Courtroom Technology” International Conference Williamsburg, USA 13 Feb 2004) said of this technology

“Another development in a contemporary public enquiry has been entirely benign. This is the portrayal of “virtual Londonderry”, compiled from maps and plans and photographs and people memories as a virtual recreation of the critical parts of Londonderry on Bloody Sunday more than 30 years ago. Any witness to the Bloody Sunday Inquiry will be shown on screen where he or she was when relevant events occurred that day, and will be able to describe his or her line of vision even though buildings have been demolished and others erected in the intervening period.

When the Inquiry Chairman, Lord Saville, and his senior Inquiry Manager demonstrated it at one of the plenary sessions of the 2000 American Bar Association Conference in London*, even hardened US Litigators could scarce forbear to cheer.

Such systems have been shown to increase the reliability of witness evidence, to enable accurate visual and oral records to be made of the evidence given, to improve comparative examination of evidence following its submission and to accelerate the process of justice”

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