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Tool will help jury understand testimony in homicide trial of Jeff Dennis, attorneys say.

Come October, a jury might be able to watch televised reenactments, of sorts, of how Carli Dennis died.
Dennis died of a single gunshot wound to the head last year.
Police say her husband, police officer Jeff Dennis, fired that fatal shot. He says Carli did it herself.
Now, with Jeff Dennis facing a homicide charge in the death, a good chunk of evidence in his case is likely to come from expert witnesses giving complex testimony to try to sway a jury to believe their theory.
Thanks to some technological and legal advances over the years, the jury picked to make that decision could have it easier than past juries in similar cases.
That’s because prosecutors and defense attorneys – for the first time in Luzerne County – will be using computer animation to show how they believe Carli died. It’s a tool, attorneys say, to help the jury better understand complex lingo of the experts.
“We bring to life their testimony,” said Andre Stuart, the head of the company handling the prosecution’s animation in the Dennis case.
Though it’s been used in the past, the animation is relatively new to the courts. Lackawanna County prosecutors used it in the 2002 prosecution of Michael Serge.
So far, the animation’s use has been upheld by appellate courts.
But the use has come under fire. A Serge attorney claims the animation over-dramatizes the truth.
And the costly venture isn’t something that can be used in every homicide trial. There are certain evidentiary requirements that must be met in order to use animation, which could cost $20,000 for an 80-second reenactment.
Perhaps that sounds like an unfair price, but Stuart said it takes two man hours of work to produce one second of animation.
“It’s gotta be accurate,” he said.
Battle of the experts
The animation was ideal for the Serge case because of the amount of expert testimony in the case, Lackawanna County District Attorney Andy Jarbola said. Serge was a former Scranton detective convicted of shooting and killing his wife. Serge had claimed he fired in self-defense after his wife attacked him with a knife.
The experts, he said, used intricate terms and phrases, like “muzzle-to-garment distance,” “triangulation,” and “angles of entry,” in explaining their findings. The animation, Jarbola said, allowed the jury to visualize what those terms meant.
“It was a very effective,” Jarbola said.
Luzerne County’s Dennis trial could have similar complexities.
First Assistant District Attorney Jackie Musto Carroll realizes that. That’s why she’s using the animation, for the first time, in the case.
“We became aware that it was available,” she said, “and decided that this would probably be a good case to use it in.”
She’s already told a judge her animation supports her theory of the case and rebuts Jeff Dennis’ suicide theory.
But Dennis’ attorneys, William Ruzzo and Ferris Webby, also had an animation done to show the death was not a homicide.
Webby said animations, in the past, weren’t “really allowed.”
Now, with it being legally OK, the animation is a “great tool for both sides,” especially since the Dennis case will be heavy with expert testimony.
“This is gonna be a battle of the experts,” Webby said.
But it’s still not definite either side will be able to use the animation.
Each party has filed motions to seek approval to use the animation. Court of Common Pleas Judge Michael Conahan will decide before Dennis’ October trial.
A complicated process
Whether animation can be used in trial depends what evidence was discovered.
Whatever is being depicted in the animation must be backed up by the findings of expert analysis of evidence in the case.
“You can’t just have someone tell a story. It’s gotta have a basis to it,” Musto Carroll said. “It’s a very technical process that they go through … to make sure the experts can say, ‘Yes, this is in compliance with the expert report.’”
Jarbola said the animation isn’t “like a motion picture.” It’s more of an animation of still photos and sketches to show where the suspect was standing, the position of the victim, the distance between the two, and the angle in which the bullet struck the victim.
In the Serge case, putting the expert reports into animation refuted Serge’s claim that he shot his wife in self-defense.
Prosecutors used an 80-second animation to show Serge shooting his wife in the back and side.
“If you’re shooting in the back it’s not self-defense,” he said. “We were able to show to the jury the defendant’s version is full of baloney.”
Recreating the scene is an arduous task, said Stuart, the CEO of the Texas-based 21st Century Forensic Animations, which also did the Serge animation.
Besides the timely production of one second of animation, everything inside the room of the homicide has to be precisely recreated, he said.
“Think of your bedroom,” Stuart said. “Think of all the objects in there. There’s a computer model for everything in there, that rocking chair, the colognes up on the desk. Everything you see in there.”
With a homicide case, there’s even more: the height and girth of the suspect and the victim, their clothing, the blood spatter on the walls. Then, there’s the science of the scene, with the forces and projectiles.
“There is just a tremendous amount of geometry,” he said.
The Serge trial was the first time Jarbola’s office used animation. It was also the first time a state appellate court reviewed its usage, upholding it, thus far, he said.
Jarbola said the Superior Court ruled the animation is a “constitutionally correct way to assist the jury in analyzing evidence.”
“They didn’t think it was an unfair way, shape or form,” he said.
A Serge attorney did.
Animation has its foes
Defense attorney Joe D’Andrea finds such animations to be extremely damaging. He said the animations are merely the opinions of experts. But once those opinions are put into a video-like form, it becomes drama, he said.
That leaves a lasting impression on jurors, he said.
“It’s terribly damaging,” he said. “This video is an opinion of an expert. It’s only an opinion. But then the opinion becomes quantified to a video that now has the impression of being reality.”
But it’s not reality. D’Andrea said it’s just a theory.
“It’s not just words,” he said. “It’s becoming dramatized. Now people see a murder. Now they believe they actually see murder. It’s very different.”
Jarbola said he would expect D’Andrea, being a defense attorney, to make such a claim.
But Jarbola thinks that if D’Andrea had evidence to support Serge’s claim, he, too, would have used it.
“The facts are the facts,” Jarbola said.
They came with a price.
Jarbola’s office paid $20,000 for the 80-second animation.
Webby, too, said the animation is costly, but he could not yet divulge the cost in the Dennis case. Musto Carroll said she has not yet received a bill, but told the company she wanted to keep the bill as low as possible.”
The price, Stuart said, depends on the complexity of the case.