by TChris

If a picture is worth a thousand words, a movie must be worth a million. No surprise, then, that the defense in Jayson Williams' murder case wanted to show the jury a video that demonstrates how the killing could have occurred accidentally.

Many lawyers believe that jurors have been conditioned by years of television viewing to pay rapt attention to anything they see on a TV screen. To the extent that the belief is true, televised evidence is more likely than live evidence to stick in the minds of jurors. What better way to tell the defendant's story, then, than via computer animation?

Demonstrative evidence is nothing new -- witnesses commonly use models and drawings to help juries understand their testimony -- but current technology makes it possible to create a very precise and detailed view of the evidence from a defense perspective. That's what Williams, the former NBA star charged with manslaughter for killing a chauffeur with a shotgun, wanted to do.

[Williams' lawyer, William] Martin said the video, which he called an animated CD, explained the gun's hammer and firing mechanism and illustrated the opinion of the defense's firearms expert that a stray wood chip had become lodged in the hammer mechanism and caused the gun to misfire while Mr. Williams held it.