Page 69 - Courting the Media Contemporary Perspectives on Media and Law

60 Christina Spiesel

unhurt. There is, however, a typical ratta-tat-tat, a bit like raccoons calling to
each other erotically on early spring nights that can be heard on YouTube
videos of tasing, some 4,000 posted so far as of 8/4/09.
When the arena is video game play we might be inclined even to value the
catharsis of harmless violence by representation, hoping that it would deflect
the need for actual acts of violence in the world. When the video in question
has been recorded during real action and becomes a document of legal interest,
this is a problematic perspective, because it is untrue that Tasers cannot cause
long lasting harm or even death. Will finders of fact be seduced by the
voyeuristic participation in what seems to be harmless action in these videos or
will they be able to step back and think critically about them as evidence? For
instance, if we see the police tasing a man in the back, will we assume that the
shooter is acting egregiously aiming at a receding non-threatening person or
will the viewer be moved to ask whether that same receding figure hadn‘t just
before threatened the shooter with physical harm? Or if the shooter maintains
the story of threat to explain his actions, will the viewer be moved to ask
whether that account is credible, or not, and look for external evidence to
corroborate one version or another, especially if one is a police officer in
uniform? [Miller ii]
While the camera possibly will record a lot of detail, it may or may not be
meaningful for understanding the unfolding events because of the narrow
view. So we may become occupied with the clothing or hair of the person
being tased, and see stains on the floor, but we probably will not see much of
the full scene at all. The camera is intended to document the deployment of the
weapon, neither to tell the story of the events that caused the gun to be fired
nor the aftermath of its use. So the figure is ripped out of context, in contrast to
dashboard camera video that may show the tasing episode from some distance
and where the context overwhelms the picture of what is happening to the
person being tased. One of the few examples of tasercam (in contrast to
tasting) involves a dark and relatively unspecified interior of perhaps a small
commercial establishment and a young African-American man, with short
dreadlocks and otherwise undistinguished clothing. [Taser Cam] Contrast this
with the dashboard camera video of the tasing of Jesse Buckley, mentioned
above. He was a twenty-three year old very large man [US Court of Appeals]
stopped on a speeding charge. He submits to being handcuffed and when he
gets out of his car, he drops down to a seated position on the ground and
begins to weep at his situation – not just the moment of being pulled over but
perhaps over all the destitution in his life. When he refuses to get up and go to
the police car, after repeated warnings, he is tased at least three times at close