“One lesson is that Zoom is a very good piece of technology that can save lots of time and expense.” “Covid has taught us two lessons,” he said. Fisher, a law professor at Stanford, said courts should be cautious. Remote testimony might appear to be a sensible compromise.īut Jeffrey L.

The pandemic has made videoconferencing commonplace, and many people remain wary of large gatherings. This month, they asked the Supreme Court to decide whether the remote testimony had run afoul of the Sixth Amendment, which guarantees a criminal defendant the right “to be confronted with the witnesses against him.”

The testimony helped convict two defendants of bank fraud. The cross-examination was marred by technical glitches and the stilted awkwardness familiar to anyone who has participated in a Zoom call. WASHINGTON - In March 2021, a year into the coronavirus pandemic, a key witness in a criminal case in a federal court in New York was allowed to testify remotely, from his lawyer’s office in California.

Supreme pics