Juries Could Visit Virtual Crime Scene

A British university says courts could one day use virtual reality to let jurors “visit” a crime scene. There’s no sign of the technology being adopted any time soon however.

Dr Caroline Sturdy Colis will lead a project using chromakey (green screen) displays and VR headsets produced by Valve to recreate a scene.

The idea would be to combine footage of the scene in its ordinary state along with any information or images recorded at the time of the crime.

Lawyers on both sides could then walk the jury through the scene when making their cases. If it works as planned, jurors would be better able to keep track of the geography and evaluate claims such as where witnesses and suspects were positioned, how clear their view of an incident would have been, and whether accounts of somebody’s movements are plausible.

Officials attending the crime scene would use the same type of VR cameras that capture footage for archaeology or gaming, rather than rely on the current mix of stills images, video recording and crime scene sketches.

While the headsets would cost just over $1,000 each, the costs could be outweighed by the long-term time and money savings involved in taking time out from the courtroom and transporting juries to a scene.