George Floyd: Sandra Ristovska and Court Systems

george floyd: The underlying pervasive assumption in the U.S. legal system is that visual evidence need not be governed by unified standards because seeing is intuitive that is, what we see is the truth, says Sandra Ristovska, an assistant professor of Media Studies who researches how images shape the pursuit of justice, according to NOW Magazine. This prevalent misconception prevents court systems from incorporating safeguards to ensure rigorous visual interpretation. In case after case from the murder of George Floyd last May to the beating of Rodney King 30 years earlier this visual evidence proves crucial to the outcome of the verdict, yet unified standards for admissibility and assessing video and images are nonexistent. As a result, justices, judges, attorneys and jurors treat video in highly varied ways that can lead to an unequal and unfair rendering of justice. Seeing is a complex social practice that places images in systems of social power, she says. With the award of a 108,000 Mellon/American Council of Learned Societies Scholars and Society Fellowship, Ristovska is undertaking the first rigorous publicly engaged research project to address the intricacies of seeing in court. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.