Court Opinion

ID: 9811096
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 22:08:31.509705+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:40:27.058480
License: Public Domain

Olaek, 0. J.,
concurring: When a witness described the still and appurtenances it was not the article itself that was presented to the jury, but simply a representation, more or less vivid, and more or less accurate, depending upon the witness. When the still and attachments were presented by a photograph, this was really more accurate and better calculated to convey to the minds of the jury the appearance of the still and fixtures than the oral description. It is true that a photograph can be so taken as to convey a false impression. But that is true also as to oral testimony. In both cases, there is the safeguard of cross-examination of witnesses and of other testimony. In describing action or movement, as an assault and battery, a kinematoscope, if it could be had, would be more useful than the language of any witness, for on such occasions witnesses often honestly disagree in their account of what they saw.
*714When there is an agreement reduced to writing, the writing is the best and sometimes the only proof allowed of what was said. Then there are occasions in which the jury has been allowed to visit the scene of the crime, as being more accurate and useful than the testimony of witnesses. Jenkins v. R. R., 110 N. C., 441; S. v. Gooch, 94 N. C., 987; Hampton v. R. R., 120 N. C., 534; S. v. Perry, 121 N. C., 535; Brown v. R. R., 165 N. C., 396; Long v. Byrd, 169 N. C., 658. In short, the courts resort to all these forms of evidence, the object being to elicit the truth.
"When a photograph was first offered in our Court it was excluded (Hampton v. R. R., 120 N. C., 537) by the majority opinion, but the dissenting opinion quoted 31 American Law, 268, that its “admission was opposed upon the principle that this kind of evidence was unknown to the learned lawyers of the Saxon Heptarch, and therefore not evidence.” Ever since that opinion, however, the Court has followed the now uniform ruling of other courts that photographs are competent as evidence, subject, however, to the usual tests of truth.
A trial is a search for truth, and no court will exclude testimony that will be an aid to that end, whether it is oral testimony, a photograph, a sketch or a map made during the trial, or a map made under the order of the court, or a writing, or an X-ray, or any other process or means, subject to the rule that the best evidence which the nature of the case will admit of must be used and subject to cross-examination and opposing evidence in open court.