Gestalt contexture and contested motives: Understanding video evidence in the murder trial of Officer Michael Slager
| Author | Patrick G Watson |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/13624806211073696 |
| Published date | 01 February 2023 |
| Date | 01 February 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Gestalt contexture and
contested motives:
Understanding video evidence
in the murder trial of Officer
Michael Slager
Patrick G Watson
Wilfrid Laurier University, Canada
Abstract
This article is situated in ongoing discussions about the influx of images of police violence. To
date, much scholarship has centred on Foucauldian notions of knowledge-power and sous-
veillance. Alternatively, I attend to how video evidence produces understanding of police vio-
lence in court through a case study of the murder trial of Officer Michael Slager who shot
and killed Walter Scott in North Charleston, South Carolina. While audio and video dir-
ect evidence of the moments leading up to Slager’s decision to shoot was presented,
cross-examination focused more explicitly on post-shooting conduct as circumstantial
evidence. This approach highlights an issue for video evidence, that what is to be settled
at trial may not be directly re-presented in video. Gurwitsch’s notion of Gestalt and
Garfinkel’s adaptation thereof are proposed as an alternative means of interrogating
video evidence.
Keywords
ethnomethodology, gestalt contexture, motive, police-involved shootings, technology, video
evidence
Corresponding author:
Patrick G Watson, Criminology, Wilfrid Laurier University, 20 Charlotte St, Brantford, Ontario, N3T 2Y3,
Canada.
Email: pwatson@wlu.ca
Article
Theoretical Criminology
2023, Vol. 27(1) 105–125
© The Author(s) 2022
Article reuse guidelines:
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DOI: 10.1177/13624806211073696
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Introduction
Moore and Singh’s (2018) recent discussion of ‘data doubles’(Haggerty and
Ericson, 2000) is a marked step forward to understanding how video evidence pro-
duces new problematics for notions of justice. Here, I take up and extend their analysis
in relation to another perplexing matter for video evidence: polarized, divergent inter-
pretations of police violence captured on video. How to theorize video evidence has
been a matter of concern for this journal since its inception (i.e. Mathiesen, 1997)
but has gained recent attention again, in part through the proliferation of videos of
police work (Sandhu and Haggerty, 2017; Stalcup and Hahn, 2016). This
work intersects with concerns about how to deliver public accountability for police
violence (Deuchar et al., 2020; Stone, 2007) in light of the ‘new visibility’of police
work (Goldsmith, 2010).
Goodwin’s (1994) paradigmatic study of the Rodney King assault by Los Angeles
Police Department (LAPD) officers should disavow readers that video unproblematically
re-presents the circumstances of police violence (see also Schwartz, 2009; Vertesi, 2015).
His exposition of the ‘coding schemes’employed by police training officer/expert
witness Charles Duke showed how an ‘expert’in police practice produced officer
intent through the recorded images and still photos. That the same video evidence led
to acquittals for the four officers involved in the criminal trial, but convictions for two
of the four in the federal civil rights trial only adds to the complexity of visual jurispru-
dence (Biber, 2009; Marusek, 2014; Mezey, 2013). Contemporary trials for police vio-
lence have proved equally problematic for situating the ‘truth value’of video
presented as evidence (Bosman et al., 2017).
I start this article by revisiting Moore and Singh’s (2018) discussion of KGB
statement videos in criminal trials. I then go on to argue that an ethnomethodological
adaptation of gestalt contexture (Garfinkel, 1967, 2002, 2021; Garfinkel and
Livingston, 2003; Watson, 2009; Wieder 1974) gives purchase on understanding
how video functions as evidence in court. Garfinkel’s approach lends itself to
video analysis, for as Goodwin’s discussion of the King beating demonstrates,
there is interpretive flexibility and extraneous information that incorporates
meaning into video evidence (see also Schneider, 2016). Settling the ‘truth’of
images, aside from being contentious, is procedural (McHugh, 1970), and this
article explores how that procedure is enacted.
Trials for on-duty police shootings are perspicuous settings (Lynch, 2007;
Wittgenstein, 1953) for the study of video evidence given that on the rare occasions
police officers are criminally charged (see Stinson, 2017), the actus reus is not typic-
ally in question; officers concede the ‘facts’that are readily depicted in video—that
the accused used violent force against the victim at the time and location re-produced
in moving images. The trier of fact is instead asked to adjudicate mens rea, whether or
not an officer acted reasonably when using violent force (Alpert and Smith, 1994;
Klinger and Brunson, 2009); for example, that they were motivated by a reasonably
perceived imminent threat to themselves or others and not motivated by malice,
revenge, anger or racial animus. Therefore, what is at issue in trial (motive) can
only be deduced from video; it is not self-evidently present within video evidence.
106 Theoretical Criminology 27(1)
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