Once again, Apple’s technology was brought up during the Kyle Rittenhouse case and now his lawyers are demanding a mistrial. 17 years old Rittenhouse is on trial for killing two people and injuring one in 2020 during the Jacob Blake unrest in Kenosha Wisconsin. At the night he was armed with an AR-15 style rifle which he claims were for protection for a car dealership and his own.
Earlier, Rittenhouse’s lawyer, Mark Richards objected to the use of an iPad to show the footage of the night of the tragic incident and accused that Apple’s pinch-in zoom technology uses an AI algorithm that alters the footage and creates something that is not real. Shockingly, the judge was convinced by that defense and put the burden of proof on the prosecution.
Kyle Rittenhouse’s lawyers are Android users and received a compressed version of the key video evidence via Apple’s Mail app
The Verge reports that the Rittenhouse trial came across another technological hurdle. The prosecution could not AirDrop key video evidence to the defense attorneys because they use Android smartphones. And when they go the footage via Apple’s Mail app it was compressed and lacked quality. On that basis, the defense attorneys are demanding a mistrial.
Rittenhouse’s lawyers say they only received a copy of the drone video on November 5th, after the trial started, and that instead of the 11.2MB video possessed by the state, the file they received was just 3.6MB. “What that means is the video provided to the defense was not as clear as the video kept by the state,” the motion for mistrial claims.
The prosecution argued that the footage in question was already made public before trial and was part of the defense exhibit but in poor quality. When the drone operator directly transferred the file in good quality to the prosecutors, it was shared with the defense attorneys via email.
The prosecutors said the individual who took the footage came to investigators after the trial had started and transferred a higher-quality version of the video to a detective via AirDrop. The detective brought the video to court, and minutes after his arrival the prosecution told defense attorneys that they had obtained a much better quality version of the video than was previously available. The detective emailed a copy to Rittenhouse’s attorney Natalie Wisco, who uses an Android mobile device, and she transferred that file to the defense’s laptop.
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