Video as evidence

A company files criminal charges indicating that veiwing the security video is what lead to the accusation of shoplifting. Does anyone know whether or not they are required to keep that tape for use as evidence in court even though 3 employees picked accused out of a photo line?


Many innocent people are incarcerated based on eye witnesses. Eye witness is far from perfect.

Video, on the other hand is not going to have lapses, distortions, etc..in its ability to recall what it has witnessed. So logic should dictate that if a video observation is stated in the charging docs, it should be required, under subpeona if neccessary, to be included as evidence...? Thanks

When Loss Prevention/Asset Protection makes a shoplifting stop all evidecne for such case report,statements, acknowledgements and videos are kept. These items go with the arresting officer to court if called to court. These same videos and reports are normally stored away in case they are needed later.

Thanks, Panther

If the tape were somehow lost, it sounds like the prosecution would still have ample evidence to justify proceeding with the case. But, as panther indicates, my experience is similarly that the stores are good about keeping the tapes and providing them to the police and prosecutor.

We had tapes reports etc for cases going back ten years.

Tapes are useful in court, but sometimes a live person pointing their finger at you or more than one person is pretty strong too. Either way you or the suspect I should say, would lose.

They can point their collective finger all they want because I know that it is not me, or the suspect, I should say, on this tape, that tape or any other tape which is why I am so interested to know if they have to produce one after citing it as the vehicle by which suspect was ID'd. I dont know how or, better yet, [I]why[I] this has gotten this far out of hand, but Kmart owes me big-time for this sh*t.

Sorry, didn't mean to rant:(

...but hey, now that I'm at it:D

...I just received whats probably the 20th letter from this law firm demanding money for Kmart...the strange thing about this one is that the dollar amount dropped from around $700 to around $300. Just thought that was kinda strange. BTW, I hope they are holding their breath ;)

Civil demand letters as a rule, don't go to randomly selected innocent folks who were just walking in the area of a store. You must have done something more than you're telling us or it has to do with a family member.

Your saying KMart sent you a Civil Demand and have sent you notice to appear to face charges for shoplifting?

Sure Panther...that's it....that's the ticket! Yeah I was walking in the mall with.....Kim Basinger....yeah that's it that's the ticket! So we were walking and I said, "Kim lets walk by KMart........"