Filming for human rights can be dangerous. It can put you, the people you are filming and the communities you are filming in at risk. Carefully assess the risks before you press “record.” INTRODUCTION “Evidence is the most important part of an investigation. Unless an investigator is able to discover and document evidence, he or she cannot discover the truth…” - Dermot Groome, Trial Attorney and Professor, Dickinson School of Law, Pennsylvania State University The goal of collecting evidence is to accurately recreate the story of what happened during an incident where human rights are violated, so that you, along with investigators, lawyers, judges, and, ultimately, the world, can bring perpetrators to justice, free the wrongly accused or secure solutions to economic, social and cultural rights violations. Sometimes, the factually correct version of the story may not be the story we hoped to tell. As human rights advocates, we must be prepared to discover the truth, even if we find that the truth is not aligned with what we initially believed happened. GOAL The goal of this section is to provide you with a basic understanding of the definition, sources, purposes, and characteristics of legal evidence so that you can better evaluate whether your video has the potential to effectively serve as evidence. To do this, we begin with a Field Note that illustrates why it is important to view the footage you collect with an objective eye. The remainder of the section is divided into the following parts: PART I PART II PART III Definition, Categories, and Sources of Evidence Purposes of Evidence Characteristics of Legal Evidence 39 VIDEO AS EVIDENCE: ALL ABOUT EVIDENCE V 1.0 LAW ALL ABOUT EVIDENCE