It’s unlikely any ‘reality’-TV shows anything but edited, cut-and-pasted, out-of-context, out-of-sequence, yellow non-journalism, aimed at drawing in the gullible in order to show them advertisements.
Maybe the guy is a murderer, but how about using competent police work and investigating this properly.
Yes indeed, in a court situation it would have to be the original tapes, and I knew of a case where the fact that there were gaps between the tapes allowed the judge to reject them, due to the appearance of pressure applied to a non-competent person (minor).
I read Rhthymdvl’s question not as going to the hearsay/non-hearsay/exception to hearsay issue, but as asking why hearsay is an issue if you have a videotape of the declarant himself making the statement at issue.
He can, and that’s where the unedited tape comes in. If the tape shows the entire encounter, and based on that, you can tell that the show took things out of context or out of order to create a show that, while entertaining, it not truthful, then the defendant would be home free on that point. The rule of completeness says that if a party attempts to introduce part of something – a document or a videotape, for example – then the other side can introduce the rest of that document or videotape, or as much as needs to be introduced to be fair, so that the complete picture is given. So if the show was a cut and paste masterpiece, the rule of completeness would admit the entire tape, and the jury could see that the show was, essentially, a fake.
IAAAL. But I don’t practice crim. Nonetheless, I don’t think that Australian law is materially different from that described by the US lawyers in this thread.
Interesting points. I will clarify - my doubts were not about whether this guy is a murderer, but whether this guy exists. He admitted quite freely to murder during his interview so I don’t think it’s a case of coercion, and ACA has been shown in the past to have just made up stories outright. So how does it stay on TV?
The Asbestos Mango, I hope you won’t be offended if I say that was one of the most unintentionally hilarious things I’ve ever read here on the SDMB, if not in my entire life.
To take that back to what I said - ACA, and TT stay on TV because they’re “current affairs” shows. They show opinion pieces, on what they perceive to be the “hot button” topics of the day. The failures of the Australian Law System are a perennial favourite, as well as the bastardness of Centrelink, and the rip-off merchant actions of Major Supermarket Chains. These are things your average Bazza and Shazza Citizen believe in, and ACA and TT (like the American tabloid magazines that go on about Elvis living and water curing cancer) capitalise on what their key audience want to listen to. If they’re shown to be lying, their hardcore ‘fans’ know that they’re only lying to bring attention to the truth, because something like that really did happen to someone, somewhere. Like to a friend of Shazza’s cousin Derek’s girlfriend’s mother. Or something.
