Documentation, documentary, and the law: What should be made of victim impact videos?

Source: (2010) Cardozo Law Review. 31(4): 979-1017.

When a majority of the Supreme Court rejected appeals in two
capital cases involving the admissibility of victim impact videos,
Justices John Paul Stevens and Stephen Breyer disagreed and wrote
separately respecting the denials of certiorari. The victim in one of the
cases was Sara Weir, a nineteen-year-old young woman who was raped,
stabbed with scissors twenty-nine times, and robbed by Douglas Kelly,
a personal trainer who frequented the gym where she worked out.
Kelly left Weir’s body under a bed in his girlfriend’s apartment, where
the body was discovered by the girlfriend’s ten-year-old son. Kelly
was found guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced to death…(Excerpt).