8 ms·

Slow-motion replays can distort criminal responsibility

166 points by fforflo 10y ago

erez 10y ago
This has always been a pet-peeve of mine, watching sports replays. When re-run in slow motion, some tackles seem more aggressive, mostly because of the body motion of the "victim" being exaggerated, while others look benign. The commentators then make judgement calls on the validity of the umpire calls, which is made in real-time, based on their opinion that was formed using the slow-mo replay.
- thomasfoster96 10y ago
  Wait until you get into watching cricket umpiring decisions that are referred to a TV umpire (by players or umpires) - slow motion replay (with a separate camera to normal tv coverage), hotspot cameras, microphones, ball tracking...
  - erez 10y ago
    Actually I have. And that's a different issue, but also very annoying.
  - pauljohncleary 10y ago
    With cricket the player's intent is not considered unlike many other sports and in courtroom trials. So looking at the most minute detail (e.g. the snickometer, the checks if the ball made a "snick" sound passing the bat, indicating contact) makes sense to the sport.
    - erez 10y ago
      I think there's something in the LBW rules about intent, not to mention the whole concept of "where would've the ball gone has it not been etc. etc." I personally dislike the whole fixation over minutiae in Cricket today. The Laws should, I think, be updated for the new technology, for instance the front-foot no-ball which now is preposterous when they keep trying to see whether a millimetre of the foot crossed the line or not, or the run-out with whether the bat was firmly touching the ground on the other side of the crease or not. Those laws were fine when the umpiring wasn't technology assisted, but they are turning the whole game to a circus these days.
      - thomasfoster96 10y ago
        Yep, if the ball pitches outside the line of the stumps it's not out unless the batsman made no attempt to play a shot. > The Laws should, I think, be updated for the new technology, I disagree (although being young I've only ever watched cricket with this sort of technology). Given the other aspects of the game rely so much on precision, I can't see letting the umpiring become more subjective and/or allowing for more human error would improve the game.
- Aethelwulf 10y ago
  If you watch rugby union, the commentators often remark how slow motion makes the tackle look worse than it is. I think it's a recognised phenomenon.
imaginenore 10y ago
But the article doesn't explain why it calls it "distortion", and not "clarification".
- throwanem 10y ago
  >The researchers believe that the slow motion version is giving observers the sense that those carrying out the violent acts on tape have more time to think and deliberate - and the observers therefore believe there is more intent in the violent actions. Premeditation makes the difference between first- and second-degree murder, and being convicted of the former tends to bring much harsher sentences. The article describes the paper as finding that people who view (e.g. store CCTV) recordings of a murder only in slow motion and without a timecode, thus lacking any clear reference to the real speed of events, are much more likely to impute premeditation than those who don't. That's what "distortion" means here.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- a3n 10y ago
  It's a distortion because it didn't happen at slow motion. Not to say slow motion can't be useful, but it's not how it happened. Think of the ultimate slow motion, a photograph. Emotions and muscle movements sweep across a face, but depending on the photographer's or editor's choice of moment, the same person can look scary or beatific.
- mcguire 10y ago
  Let's say that A punches B, causing B to fall backwards onto a hard surface, resulting in death. If A intended to kill B, that's murder. If A did not intend to kill B, it's manslaughter, a lesser crime with lesser punishment. You are sitting on the jury, with the prosecution flashing between two frames of a video of the punch and arguing that A altered the trajectory of the punch to cause B to fall onto the hard surface. Two frames is, say, 33 milliseconds, or somewhere between 2cm and 4m (I admit, I was surprised by that speed) of neural pathway, taking the lowest and highest nerve conduction velocities I can find. How many intentions and motor changes can you perform in 33ms?
djaychela 10y ago
Having recently sat on a Jury in the UK, deliberating on a triple assault case, the CCTV was the most crucial piece of evidence - eye witness reports were patchy and in some cases contradictory, and watching the events on CCTV was important in deciding what actually happened. If we had not had access to the CCTV - both in real time and slowed down (which was actually produced by the defence, not the prosecution), then I strongly believe the outcome would have been different; indeed if another angle had been present then one count may well have been judged differently. It is easy to view something slowly and decide that intent was more severe than may have been planned by the people involved, but in my experience it's also invaluable in seeing what actually happened, as the camera can be the most reliable witness to the facts of the matter.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- afandian 10y ago
  My view is that the aim of a using juries is to bring the things humans are good at* to the judgment process, i.e. deciding who's lying under cross-examination. Humans might be good at detecting 'intent' in the real world and calibrated for reality. Their calibration might be completely wrong for slow-motion. So maybe slow-mo does give a better view of what happened to establish the facts of the matter but may drastically skew other, more important factors. ___ * sadly it doesn't seem to be true
  - anexprogrammer 10y ago
    It's more about bringing independence to the judgement. It's a check against the system, or an overly powerful state. A judge may know the law more precisely than a layperson, but is no less fallible. But they are of the system. Juries work remarkably well on that basis. That's not to say they're likely to be better at deciding truth, guilt or innocence. They'll undoubtedly bring some of their prejudices in from the street. Juries have the ability to acquit a defendant despite the evidence and facts (jury nullification), which is very rarely if ever pointed out to juries. Only case I can think of was Clive Ponting, a UK civil servant, prosecuted for leaking Falklands war documents. He claimed to have done so in the public interest. The governement position was public interest is whatever we think it is. The judge directed them to convict. The jury acquitted. The govt was not happy. They later changed the Official Secrets Act such that this defence was no longer possible and since then public interest is now whatever the UK Govt says it is.
xedarius 10y ago
This is no real surprise. It's apparent when they show the replays during a boxing match, the punches look much much worse than they do in real-time. Not to mention all the punches that you miss due to the speed of the action.
Pelser 10y ago
The opposite might also be true - maybe slow motion shows true entent rather?
- Houshalter 10y ago
  Perhaps. It seems like the issue is with slowmo is it looks like you have more time to decide and react, then you actually do. In real time it's more clear that an action was reactive, and that there was no time to make a calculated decision.
  - pauljohncleary 10y ago
    Different people think at different speeds[1], so if we really want to judge someone based on what we see as a reactive action, we'd need to measure their "thinking speed" first to get a full picture. 1 http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=102169531 http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1021695...
  - chrisweekly 10y ago
    Confounding the issue: evidence that some reactions happen before the actor is consciously aware that there is a decision to be made (let alone actually making a choice and deliberately initiating a response). It goes beyond recoiling your hand from a hot stove before you're aware of the pain. Tests w/ next-gen helicopter gunship HUD trigger controls showed pilots opening fire microseconds _before_ their neural pathways for "friend/foe" recognition were leveraged. Need to dig up my sources... but the TLDR: a lot of neuroscience brings "free will" into question. Maybe consciousness is an epiphenomenon, and free will a story we tell ourselves, and "decisions" mere post-hoc rationalizations for actions we take before any awareness? Fascinating stuff.
    - coredog64 10y ago
      Isn't this all based on those fMRI scans that were discredited? http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/07/algorithms-used-to-study-brain-activity-may-be-exaggerating-results/ http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/07/algorithms-used-to-st...
benevol 10y ago
A slow-motion replay is just 1 way of "looking closer". The thing is, in order to not be hypocritical, we'd need to look as closely as possible. Once we do that, we'll be looking at the molecular structure of not only the brain of the perpetrator but also the whole body (as there is of course infinite interaction). We'll be asking for the causes that led to the body being as it was at the moment of the thing will currently call "crime". We'll end up understanding that there is no free will, which will force us to rethink what we call "punishment".
- evolonce 10y ago
  Hear, hear! Although I don't think people here are interested in hearing arguments that don't click in desired ways with their economic interests. Rather sadistic, the graying-out option, when used on posts like this.
- sametmax 10y ago
  That's suppose the world is perfectly causal. However, there are areas where are are not sure about this: - chaos; - quantum phenomenum; - creative thoughts; Not saying it's not causal, but since we can't prove it is, yet, we can't state for sure there is no free will. Which would bother the hell out of many people :)
- rubidium 10y ago
  Is there any way for your statement (which has many bold assertions) to lead anywhere but "We're all just victims of our genes"? Your materialistic assumptions are a wonderful way to do science, but a terrible way to be human or govern.
  - vidarh 10y ago
    It goes further. His statement (which I agree with) implies that we have no individual responsibility because our actions are entirely beyond our control. In that case the perpetrator is just as much victim, which alters the entire balance of justice, and creates all kinds of ugly rabbit holes to deal with with respect to societal effects and morality.
RcouF1uZ4gsC 10y ago
I think what slow motion does is reveal the full violence of an action. Some commenters have mentioned that slow-motion tackles and punches look much worse than they do in real life. However, in real life, I think we underestimate the violence. Medical research into things like CTE has revealed that there is actually brain damage occurring during those plays. Notice the research used a gunshot video. I think the average person underestimates the violence inflicted by a bullet because our human intuition fails us for small objects traveling that fast. I think what slow-motion does is help reveal the true violence inflicted on another person whether from a punch, tackle, or gunshot. Update: IANAL but also note that in this specific case, murder during commission of a felony ( armed robbery ) would be classed in many states as felony murder and would be first degree murder. See http://criminal.lawyers.com/criminal-law-basics/murder-during-the-commission-of-a-felony.html http://criminal.lawyers.com/criminal-law-basics/murder-durin... So if this is a felony murder state, the slow motion would actually help the jury come to the correct conclusion.
- fiatjaf 10y ago
  Nailed it.
- entropy_ 10y ago
  How violent an action truly is is irrelevant when deciding whether a murder was premeditated(first degree) or not(second degree). If I swing a hammer at a wall and someone happens to be passing by, I hit them in the face and kill them, it's going to look very gruesome in slow motion. That doesn't mean I intended to kill the person. If a jury is more likely to think I had time to notice the person passing by because of slow motion and thus believe that I intended to kill the person, then that's an error.
  - kevin_b_er 10y ago
    It doesn't even have to be a killing. The slow motion makes it look like actions were deliberate instead of spontaneous. So it makes it look like a planned action. If the defendant deliberately did it, they must be pretty terrible, right? Guilty of a worse crime.
dbooookldjfo 10y ago
ok well just slow it in normal and slow-motion and explain to the jury that they may experience bias when watching the slow-motion version

166 points by fforflo 10y ago

erez 10y ago

This has always been a pet-peeve of mine, watching sports replays. When re-run in slow motion, some tackles seem more aggressive, mostly because of the body motion of the "victim" being exaggerated, while others look benign. The commentators then make judgement calls on the validity of the umpire calls, which is made in real-time, based on their opinion that was formed using the slow-mo replay.

thomasfoster96 10y ago
Wait until you get into watching cricket umpiring decisions that are referred to a TV umpire (by players or umpires) - slow motion replay (with a separate camera to normal tv coverage), hotspot cameras, microphones, ball tracking...
- erez 10y ago
  Actually I have. And that's a different issue, but also very annoying.
- pauljohncleary 10y ago
  With cricket the player's intent is not considered unlike many other sports and in courtroom trials. So looking at the most minute detail (e.g. the snickometer, the checks if the ball made a "snick" sound passing the bat, indicating contact) makes sense to the sport.
  - erez 10y ago
    I think there's something in the LBW rules about intent, not to mention the whole concept of "where would've the ball gone has it not been etc. etc." I personally dislike the whole fixation over minutiae in Cricket today. The Laws should, I think, be updated for the new technology, for instance the front-foot no-ball which now is preposterous when they keep trying to see whether a millimetre of the foot crossed the line or not, or the run-out with whether the bat was firmly touching the ground on the other side of the crease or not. Those laws were fine when the umpiring wasn't technology assisted, but they are turning the whole game to a circus these days.
    - thomasfoster96 10y ago
      Yep, if the ball pitches outside the line of the stumps it's not out unless the batsman made no attempt to play a shot. > The Laws should, I think, be updated for the new technology, I disagree (although being young I've only ever watched cricket with this sort of technology). Given the other aspects of the game rely so much on precision, I can't see letting the umpiring become more subjective and/or allowing for more human error would improve the game.
Aethelwulf 10y ago
If you watch rugby union, the commentators often remark how slow motion makes the tackle look worse than it is. I think it's a recognised phenomenon.

imaginenore 10y ago

But the article doesn't explain why it calls it "distortion", and not "clarification".

throwanem 10y ago
>The researchers believe that the slow motion version is giving observers the sense that those carrying out the violent acts on tape have more time to think and deliberate - and the observers therefore believe there is more intent in the violent actions. Premeditation makes the difference between first- and second-degree murder, and being convicted of the former tends to bring much harsher sentences. The article describes the paper as finding that people who view (e.g. store CCTV) recordings of a murder only in slow motion and without a timecode, thus lacking any clear reference to the real speed of events, are much more likely to impute premeditation than those who don't. That's what "distortion" means here.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
a3n 10y ago
It's a distortion because it didn't happen at slow motion. Not to say slow motion can't be useful, but it's not how it happened. Think of the ultimate slow motion, a photograph. Emotions and muscle movements sweep across a face, but depending on the photographer's or editor's choice of moment, the same person can look scary or beatific.
mcguire 10y ago
Let's say that A punches B, causing B to fall backwards onto a hard surface, resulting in death. If A intended to kill B, that's murder. If A did not intend to kill B, it's manslaughter, a lesser crime with lesser punishment. You are sitting on the jury, with the prosecution flashing between two frames of a video of the punch and arguing that A altered the trajectory of the punch to cause B to fall onto the hard surface. Two frames is, say, 33 milliseconds, or somewhere between 2cm and 4m (I admit, I was surprised by that speed) of neural pathway, taking the lowest and highest nerve conduction velocities I can find. How many intentions and motor changes can you perform in 33ms?

djaychela 10y ago

Having recently sat on a Jury in the UK, deliberating on a triple assault case, the CCTV was the most crucial piece of evidence - eye witness reports were patchy and in some cases contradictory, and watching the events on CCTV was important in deciding what actually happened. If we had not had access to the CCTV - both in real time and slowed down (which was actually produced by the defence, not the prosecution), then I strongly believe the outcome would have been different; indeed if another angle had been present then one count may well have been judged differently. It is easy to view something slowly and decide that intent was more severe than may have been planned by the people involved, but in my experience it's also invaluable in seeing what actually happened, as the camera can be the most reliable witness to the facts of the matter.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
afandian 10y ago
My view is that the aim of a using juries is to bring the things humans are good at* to the judgment process, i.e. deciding who's lying under cross-examination. Humans might be good at detecting 'intent' in the real world and calibrated for reality. Their calibration might be completely wrong for slow-motion. So maybe slow-mo does give a better view of what happened to establish the facts of the matter but may drastically skew other, more important factors. ___ * sadly it doesn't seem to be true
- anexprogrammer 10y ago
  It's more about bringing independence to the judgement. It's a check against the system, or an overly powerful state. A judge may know the law more precisely than a layperson, but is no less fallible. But they are of the system. Juries work remarkably well on that basis. That's not to say they're likely to be better at deciding truth, guilt or innocence. They'll undoubtedly bring some of their prejudices in from the street. Juries have the ability to acquit a defendant despite the evidence and facts (jury nullification), which is very rarely if ever pointed out to juries. Only case I can think of was Clive Ponting, a UK civil servant, prosecuted for leaking Falklands war documents. He claimed to have done so in the public interest. The governement position was public interest is whatever we think it is. The judge directed them to convict. The jury acquitted. The govt was not happy. They later changed the Official Secrets Act such that this defence was no longer possible and since then public interest is now whatever the UK Govt says it is.

xedarius 10y ago

This is no real surprise. It's apparent when they show the replays during a boxing match, the punches look much much worse than they do in real-time. Not to mention all the punches that you miss due to the speed of the action.

Pelser 10y ago

The opposite might also be true - maybe slow motion shows true entent rather?

Houshalter 10y ago
Perhaps. It seems like the issue is with slowmo is it looks like you have more time to decide and react, then you actually do. In real time it's more clear that an action was reactive, and that there was no time to make a calculated decision.
- pauljohncleary 10y ago
  Different people think at different speeds[1], so if we really want to judge someone based on what we see as a reactive action, we'd need to measure their "thinking speed" first to get a full picture. 1 http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=102169531 http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1021695...
- chrisweekly 10y ago
  Confounding the issue: evidence that some reactions happen before the actor is consciously aware that there is a decision to be made (let alone actually making a choice and deliberately initiating a response). It goes beyond recoiling your hand from a hot stove before you're aware of the pain. Tests w/ next-gen helicopter gunship HUD trigger controls showed pilots opening fire microseconds _before_ their neural pathways for "friend/foe" recognition were leveraged. Need to dig up my sources... but the TLDR: a lot of neuroscience brings "free will" into question. Maybe consciousness is an epiphenomenon, and free will a story we tell ourselves, and "decisions" mere post-hoc rationalizations for actions we take before any awareness? Fascinating stuff.
  - coredog64 10y ago
    Isn't this all based on those fMRI scans that were discredited? http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/07/algorithms-used-to-study-brain-activity-may-be-exaggerating-results/ http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/07/algorithms-used-to-st...

benevol 10y ago

A slow-motion replay is just 1 way of "looking closer". The thing is, in order to not be hypocritical, we'd need to look as closely as possible. Once we do that, we'll be looking at the molecular structure of not only the brain of the perpetrator but also the whole body (as there is of course infinite interaction). We'll be asking for the causes that led to the body being as it was at the moment of the thing will currently call "crime". We'll end up understanding that there is no free will, which will force us to rethink what we call "punishment".

evolonce 10y ago
Hear, hear! Although I don't think people here are interested in hearing arguments that don't click in desired ways with their economic interests. Rather sadistic, the graying-out option, when used on posts like this.
sametmax 10y ago
That's suppose the world is perfectly causal. However, there are areas where are are not sure about this: - chaos; - quantum phenomenum; - creative thoughts; Not saying it's not causal, but since we can't prove it is, yet, we can't state for sure there is no free will. Which would bother the hell out of many people :)
rubidium 10y ago
Is there any way for your statement (which has many bold assertions) to lead anywhere but "We're all just victims of our genes"? Your materialistic assumptions are a wonderful way to do science, but a terrible way to be human or govern.
- vidarh 10y ago
  It goes further. His statement (which I agree with) implies that we have no individual responsibility because our actions are entirely beyond our control. In that case the perpetrator is just as much victim, which alters the entire balance of justice, and creates all kinds of ugly rabbit holes to deal with with respect to societal effects and morality.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 10y ago

I think what slow motion does is reveal the full violence of an action. Some commenters have mentioned that slow-motion tackles and punches look much worse than they do in real life. However, in real life, I think we underestimate the violence. Medical research into things like CTE has revealed that there is actually brain damage occurring during those plays. Notice the research used a gunshot video. I think the average person underestimates the violence inflicted by a bullet because our human intuition fails us for small objects traveling that fast. I think what slow-motion does is help reveal the true violence inflicted on another person whether from a punch, tackle, or gunshot. Update: IANAL but also note that in this specific case, murder during commission of a felony ( armed robbery ) would be classed in many states as felony murder and would be first degree murder. See http://criminal.lawyers.com/criminal-law-basics/murder-during-the-commission-of-a-felony.html http://criminal.lawyers.com/criminal-law-basics/murder-durin... So if this is a felony murder state, the slow motion would actually help the jury come to the correct conclusion.

fiatjaf 10y ago
Nailed it.
entropy_ 10y ago
How violent an action truly is is irrelevant when deciding whether a murder was premeditated(first degree) or not(second degree). If I swing a hammer at a wall and someone happens to be passing by, I hit them in the face and kill them, it's going to look very gruesome in slow motion. That doesn't mean I intended to kill the person. If a jury is more likely to think I had time to notice the person passing by because of slow motion and thus believe that I intended to kill the person, then that's an error.
- kevin_b_er 10y ago
  It doesn't even have to be a killing. The slow motion makes it look like actions were deliberate instead of spontaneous. So it makes it look like a planned action. If the defendant deliberately did it, they must be pretty terrible, right? Guilty of a worse crime.

dbooookldjfo 10y ago

ok well just slow it in normal and slow-motion and explain to the jury that they may experience bias when watching the slow-motion version