A growing number of lawyers are looking to forensic animation to help turn jurors into witnesses.

When Dr. Sam Sheppard was first convicted of murdering his wife in the mid-1950s, he insisted upon his innocence. His insistence was so vehement, in fact, that it inspired two television series and a film -- "The Fugitive."

Despite his protests (and the popularity of the TV shows and movie about him), Sheppard was never exonerated during his lifetime.

But last year, the famous convict was finally found not guilty after a second trial urged by his son. How did defense attorneys prove something in 2000 that was impossible to prove in 1954? They used a new computer tool called forensic animation.

Forensic animation involves using computers to generate an animated version of a crime or accident that a jury could not otherwise have witnessed or even understood.

"Jurors feel like they've witnessed something rather than just heard a version of it," Stuart Gold, owner and director of Shadow and Light Productions, told "CyberCrime."

Shadow and Light Productions is a forensic animation company located in Berkeley, California, that specializes in medical malpractice and patent infringement cases.

"More and more courtrooms are choosing to include this kind of information rather than exclude it," Gold said.

Forensic animation was first introduced into criminal courts in 1992 during the trial of Jim Mitchell. Mitchell, known as the San Francisco porn king, was accused of killing his brother and business partner, Artie. While he claimed to remember nothing of the murder, California prosecutors used the animation to help explain to a jury how Mitchell could have committed the crime.

"Our response was 'Oh, my gosh, what are we going to do about this?'" Nanci Clarence, who defended Mitchell at the time, remembers. "But [...] looking at that animation, we realized that it was resting on very, very speculative science, science that we could attack through the actual experts who would be testifying."

The jury believed the animation over Clarence's experts, however, and convicted Mitchell, who appealed the verdict in part based on the animation. Mitchell lost his appeal and served three years of his six-year sentence for voluntary manslaughter before being released.

Since then, forensic animation has become increasingly commonplace in the courtroom.

"We have been taught by our culture to integrate reality through the images that we see on television," Gold said. "We unconsciously take in these images on a very deep level and therefore believe that what we see is real. Seeing is believing.

Scientific research bears this assertion out. A 1992 study, known as the Weiss-McGrath report, found "a 100 percent increase in juror retention of visual over oral presentations and a 650 percent increase in juror retention of combined visual and oral presentations over oral presentations alone."

Thus animators like Gold and the lawyers they work for turn to forensic animation to help juries understand and remember their arguments. These animations, which were once incredibly expensive, costing between $1,000 and $3,000 per second, now cost only $50 to $100 per second. Gold claims that an average animation project can cost anywhere from $5,000 to $15,000.

The projects are most commonly used to reconstruct vehicular accidents, detail architectural elements in civil lawsuits, demonstrate the workings of technology in patent cases, and explain the spatial relationships involved in a crime scene in criminal cases.

Gold is quick to point out, however, that forensic animation can never replace expert testimony and is always created in cooperation with experts.

"I work with a forensic expert, which would be an engineer, a doctor, a forensic reconstructionist," Gold said. "I will take the information that they use in their testimony and produce a visualization of that."

Gold goes on to note that there are drawbacks to using forensic animation. For one thing, it can put defendents and plaintiffs with less money at a disadvantage.

"In some instances, individuals have been forced to settle out of court because they couldn't afford to create their own animations and fight their case on an even playing field," he noted. "What we're heading towards basically is dueling animators."

Gold also warns that animations can be so persuasive and realistic as to be prejudicial, leading jurors to believe they've actually witnessed a crime rather than a version of it. Its power, he says, has little to do with its veracity.

"The biggest advantage is basically psychological," he said. "What you are doing is converting your jurors into witnesses."

This article was originally published on April 24, 2001.