FROM THE FIELD FILMING LONG AFTER A CRIME: INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL TRIBUNAL FOR THE FORMER YUGOSLAVIA (ICTY) v. DOKMANOVIĆ FILMING Backstory In November of 1991, Serbian soldiers moved over 200 individuals from a hospital in the town of Vukovar, Croatia to a prison camp on a farm called Ovčara. Here, the soldiers beat their prisoners for several hours and then shot and killed them. Slavko Dokmanović was the President of the Vukovar Municipality at the time. He was charged by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia for: i) his personal participation in the actual beatings and killings; and ii) aiding and abetting in the beating and willful killing of these 200 plus individuals. SHOWN IN THE VIDEO Ovčara Farm Slavko Dokmanović Dokmanović pleaded not guilty, alleging that he could not have committed these crimes because he was nowhere near the farm at the time of the massacre. To prove it, his defense attorney introduced a video of Dokmanović and his colleagues traveling in a car along rural roads with a time and date stamp that matched the time and date of the killings. He argued that this video proved he wasn’t at the farm when the killings occurred. In other words, Dokmanović gave the court an alibi video. In case you are unable to watch this 1-minute clip, it is a good example of how a professional crime-scene videographer films. While the vehicle is stopped, he begins filming a very slow 180-degree pan. He then holds the camera steady while filming a wide shot driving along the route. Disproving the Alibi Video The prosecution didn’t believe him – nor did they trust the video – so they deployed a crime-scene investigator named Vladimir Dzuro to travel to Vukovar. With camera in hand, Dzuro hopped in a vehicle and retraced the route Dokmanović claimed he took on the afternoon of Nov. 21, 1991. A clip from the investigator’s video the can be viewed at: bit.ly/VaE_Dokmanovic. Still from the video recorded by investigator Vladimir Dzuro. 99 VIDEO AS EVIDENCE: FILMING SECURE SCENES V 1.0