The Supreme Court of New Jersey encounters a claim of
undue prejudice in State of New Jersey v. Kingkamau Nantambu
(A-97-13, Decided April 29, 2015)
Audio tapes and video tapes are a frequent coin of the realm in
both federal and state criminal practice. It is increasingly rare
to find a major prosecution in which the government's discovery
does not now include some form of recording. There are multiple
paths of varying effectiveness through which intrepid defense
counsel can seek to exclude this evidence. One of the more
straightforward is if the recording in question can be argued to
have been incomplete in some way.
Now, one might assume that a partial recording, even if
relevant, would be so inherently suspect as to preclude admission
under Rule 403 of the Federal Rules of Evidence or one of its state
law counterparts. But this would be a perilous assumption.
Incomplete or partial tape recordings can be admitted, once
authenticated and found to be trustworthy,
