Visual Information and Its Research in the Trial of Criminal Cases

The article presents the author’s view of the development of the trend connected with the research of visual information, which is a part of the theory of the judicial investigation of crimes. There is an urgent necessity to reconsider the traditional methodological approaches and combine them with latest achievements in various spheres of the humanities and natural sciences. Cognitivistics is recognized as one of such trends that is potentially ready to be adapted for the sphere of criminal law sciences. The author stresses that the results obtained by cognitive sciences could, after necessary research, be successfully used to develop recommendations on working with judiciary information. It is claimed that a wide spread of digital technologies enabling the creation of a retrospective visual picture of criminal events requires paying special attention to the specific features of researching visual information in court. It is necessary to focus not on the technical-criminalistic support of preserving such information, but on the development of tactical means and technologies that will allow us to analyze its influence on the results of evidentiary activities of the professional participants of the judiciary investigation of criminal cases. This encompasses the strategic and tactical basis of representing visual information as well as taking into account the correlation between the specifics of its perception and the passing of judgements that acquire the force of a judicial decision. The correlation between and the differentiation of visual perception and visuality are viewed as important. The result of investigating visual information is the reconstructed visual image of a crime. The latter will make it possible to predict the content of the final decision on a criminal case. However, it could also be characterized by inconsistency due to biased interpretations of visual information. As the sources of visual information are not common enough in criminal court proceedings in Russia, the issues of their presentation in court have not been properly studied and require a critical scientific analysis. The author supports the opinions of foreign colleagues who stress not only the evidently positive features of using visual sources as proof, but also the obviously negative ones, which challenge both the effectiveness and accuracy of the process of proof, and the reliability of visual information. The author argues for the following claim: visual information does reflect reality, it shapes it by creating not the «artifact of the past», but the «artifact of the present». Due to this, several key problems are singled out, which are connected with providing proof in criminal procee­dings through the demonstration of various sources of visual information.