Teaching the Jury Though Effective Use of Visuals

John Sammons and Lars Daniel

In reality, this book is may be improperly subtitled; perhaps it should read, “Teaching everyone through effective use of visuals.”

What John Sammons and Lars Daniel have done with Digital Forensics Trial Graphics is to boil down the essentials of good graphic design into a few impactful chapters. They have not bogged down the content with too much detail, after all, this book is for practicing digital forensics experts, not for art students.

As an expert in any field, but especially in the extremely technical world of digital forensics, communicating complex technical information to a layperson is one of the most challenging and yet rewarding services we perform. And when I say layperson, I am including everyone who may be involved in a legal situation, be it a criminal trial or a civil action. Judges, police, attorneys, and jurors all fall into the category of layperson when confronted by technical evidence of the sort that we as digital forensics experts deal with everyday.

As you will see in this book, easy for us experts to treat our well of knowledge as commonplace since we understand the jargon and can effortlessly bat about acronyms like verbal badminton birdies.

Consider the last time you went to your physician for a visit. Did you understand everything she/he said, or did that medical term confound you? Did you ask her/him to explain what the heck that term meant? Or did you leave knowing less than you should have about whatever medical issue that drove you to make that visit to the doctor in the first place?

It is easy to forget that the people we are charged with conveying our knowledge to, the triers of fact, a.k.a the jurors, are not allowed to ask questions. They are totally dependent on our ability to convey complex technical information to them so they can consider that information in making what could be a life or death decision.

In our profession, strong communication skills, especially the ability to reduce complexity to simplicity in creating reports and presentations that will be provided to jurors and others in a courtroom, is a critical skill that cannot be ignored if we are to be the experts we need to be.

We spend a lot of time perfecting our skills in the area of digital forensics by pursuing training specific to our field. Nothing in that training prepares us to create the kind of visual aids we need to teach what we know to someone completely unfamiliar with our field. What most people think they know about digital forensics comes from watching “Hollywood forensics” in television programs such as CSI.

It is our job and our obligation to put forward the best explanation of what a juror needs to understand in the most effective form possible. Trial graphics are one of the ways we can accomplish that goal.

Over the years I have worked with Lars Daniel to create and present digital forensics concepts to thousands of attorneys, judges, law enforcement, and others involved in the legal profession through continuing legal education classes.

Between his experience and mine, we have presented expert testimony in state and federal courts over 75 times. This experience is invaluable in understanding how laypersons perceive and grasp the concepts in digital forensics. And his experience is evident in this book.

What I appreciate most about Sammons and Daniel’s Digital Forensics Trial Graphics is that it guides the reader through the process of understanding how graphics should be designed and used to communicate.

They have effectively stripped away all but the meat of the subject. This makes the idea of learning “graphic design” for the technical crowd much less daunting that picking up an art design book and starting from scratch.

They have levered their personal expertise and their scholarly backgrounds to produce a book that is both approachable and practical.

After working in this field for 16 years, I find it remarkable that none of the university digital forensics programs include a course dealing with this subject.

I can say without reservation that this book, and more specifically, the methods it espouses, has changed my life for the better. Even after all the years I have spent in this field, having access to Digital Forensics Trial Graphics has opened my eyes to new and better ways to approach communicating with juries.

And communicating our findings is the purpose of what we do.

Digital Forensics Examiner and Cellular Analyst

Guardian Digital Forensics

Raleigh, NC, October 2016