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-- OriginalOwner_ writes:

The Center for American Progress reports

Prosecutors and defense attorneys have only just begun to wrestle over the facts in an unprecedented series of felony trials stemming from the mass round-up arrest of hundreds of protesters on Inauguration Day. The federal government is arguing that everyone charged was an active participant, provoking alarming notions of collective punishment, but video evidence and media reports indicate that many caught in the mass arrest were not organized Antifa disrupters but rather onlookers caught in a dragnet.

[...] Lawyers from each side struggled [November 21, the second day of the trial of 6 defendants] to work up any kind of rhythm in their questioning because of the repeated interruptions necessary to navigate the gigantic pile of video evidence the government is relying upon. One might expect a serious felony trial involving thousands of gigabytes of video data covering hours of chaos in the streets to have some state-of-the-art system for playback--or at least the kind of pre-cut clips common on sports highlights shows.

But the law and order playing out in Courtroom 203 of the D.C. Superior Court has no such handy facilitation.

"I'm just going to back it up and--oops too far", Assistant U.S. Attorney (AUSA) Rizwan Qureshi said while trying to examine one government witness Tuesday.

The system befuddled defense attorneys just as much during their attempts at cross-examination. When one of the six defendants' lawyers sought to play back video for a Metropolitan Police Department officer, her colleague's computer froze up and only played sound. As the team tried to figure it out, Judge Lynn Leibovitz leaned toward their table and suggested they all "might want to get a tech person."

Earlier in the day, defense counsel Andrew Lazerow began his questioning of a Customs and Border Protection helicopter pilot by saying he wanted to revisit a portion of video shot from the man's chopper.

"Do you know how to do that?" AUSA Jennifer Kerkhoff offered helpfully as Lazerow reached the examiner's console.

"Uh, no", Lazerow said back.

"It's okay. Here.", Kerkhoff said, rising to show her opposing counsel how to work the touch-screen system.

The interruption itself took about as long as Lazerow's brief, narrow questioning of the pilot.

The serial tech hang-ups gave the proceedings an air of farce.

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