Opinion ID: 787516
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Manner of Presentation

Text: 95 Hammoud also challenges the manner in which the Government presented the videotapes, arguing that the tapes were repeatedly rewound and replayed in order to heighten their prejudicial impact. The record does not bear out this claim. The Government played the tapes for the jury while a linguist translated the statements being made. At several points, the linguist asked for the tape to be rewound because his translation had fallen behind the action on the video. The following is a representative episode: 96 Our slogan was, is and will remain to be Death to Israel. And the crowd repeats the same thing three times. 97 Mr. Nasserallah says, And along The Resistance path — can you rewind it just a little? 98 It says, Along The Resistance path, our bodies bleed, our bodies fall to the ground and our heads tumble above our heads — I'm sorry, our houses tumble above our heads. 99 It says — I'm sorry, can you rewind just a little bit? Okay. He talks — I missed that part because of the rewinding, but he talks about The Resistance continues.... 100 J.A. 2227. We see nothing improper or prejudicial in rewinding the videos so that the translator could keep up. 101 Hammoud further asserts that it was improper for the Government to use a translator at all — he contends that the Government should have simply played the tapes and allowed the jury to follow along with a printed translation. We disagree. It would have been exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, for a jury to follow along with a written, English translation of a videotape filmed entirely in Arabic. The district court did not abuse its discretion in determining that playing the video with simultaneous oral translation was a more effective and helpful way of presenting the evidence to the jury.