Judge Catches Witness Being Fed Answers by Smart Glasses

Welcome once again to Leato's Law. Here's Steve Leato. — I've got a story here and I'm surprised it took this long. Man wore smart glasses for high court coaching. According to the BBC who ran the story, Josh Sen. Thanks a lot. A man's been accused by a high court judge of wearing smart glasses to secretly receive coaching while testifying. Now, this happened in a court across the pond. As we say, the claim arose during a ruling by a judge in a case brought by a party over the directorship of a property development company that owns a flat in southeast London and land in Tundridge. Now, here's the thing. What the case is about is not important. Person comes into court, they're called to testify, they go up, take an oath, tell the truth, etc., And then it turns out that the testimony they're giving is being fed to them through their smart glasses. At least that's the allegation. And that would be a problem. So at one point in time, the witness was told to remove the glasses after the court became curious about long pauses before answering questions. So, a question would be put to the witness and the witness would think about it and then give an answer and then interference was heard coming from around the witness. Now, I don't know what they mean by that. I mean, I know what interference could be, but for someone to pick up interference near the witness, was it interfering with other signals in the area or was it static or what does that actually mean? But the judge later found that the witness had been assisted or coached in his replies to questions put to him during crossexamination. Now, this trial happened in January and once the glasses were taken off, uh, an interpreter was still translating a question when the witness's mobile phone began broadcasting a voice. Now, the witness tried to say that was Chat GPT talking, but the judge said there was clearly someone on the mobile phone talking to the witness. He then removed his mobile phone from his inner jacket pocket. He denied using smart glasses to receive answers and denied they were connected to his phone. But the judge said multiple calls had been made from the phone. apparently examined the phone to a contact listed as Abracadabra, whom the witness said was simply a taxi driver that he knew. The judge said she did not need to determine who was coaching the witness, but accepted that he was being assisted or coached in his replies to questions put to him during crossexamination. And that by the way is to be expected because during a direct if someone calls the witness you assume the witness is being called for a reason that attorney knows about and generally speaking it would be on crossexamination where you might be needing help. So the judge ruled, this is a quote, "In my judgment from what occurred in court, it is clear that a call was made connected to his smart glasses and continued during his evidence until his mobile phone was removed from him. Not only have I held that he was untruthful in denying his use of the smart glasses and his calls to Abracadabra, but the effect of this is that his evidence is unreliable and untruthful. And that's the end of the quote. And so that's your problem. And I mentioned a couple days ago about evidence spoliation where somebody destroys evidence and it creates a presumption. Likewise, a court can look at somebody and say, "Okay, this person is not testifying truthfully. Therefore, their testimony is unreliable. It's not spoliation, but it's simply the same idea that it creates the presumption that the testimony is not trustworthy. " And so one thing you should know because some people are going to say, "But wait, Steve, like before court, before you go in, if somebody tells you a bunch of stuff and you remember it and then you go in and say it back on the stand, what's the difference then if they are feeding it to you live? " And the real issue is this. If you are testifying, you are presumably testifying about things that you have firsthand knowledge of, stuff you know, okay? And a person on cross- examination can always ask questions about the foundation of your testimony. Is this firsthand knowledge? Is this stuff you know yourself? And the fact that somebody's feeding him the answers implies that he doesn't know this stuff himself. Now, it does mention a translator. And so the question I have is, was he testifying in English or another language? and the

questions were coming in English, being translated to him in another language, and then he'd give the answer back and have it translated back. I've seen that happen also, but it doesn't matter. The point here is that questions were posed to him and the judge found that the answers were fed to him by somebody else who heard the question, presumably through the use of the smart glasses and the phone. Some of you might recall a story that was a while ago about a company that said it could help you with your traffic tickets. And they announced and said that we're going to send someone into court wearing smart glasses and using those smart glasses, we're going to defend them. And I had done a video at the time saying, um, if that happens, there's going to be real problems because it raises all kinds of issues, including this one. And interestingly, right before that happened, they canceled the experiment. And it's probably good that they did because you can imagine in America, the same thing would happen. Person gets on the stand, they're wearing smart glasses, they're being asked a bunch of questions. Somebody becomes suspicious and says, "Hey, um, are those glasses prescription? Can you take them off? Can we examine them? Are they smart glasses? Can you hear something from them? " And in a courtroom, I wouldn't be surprised if somebody sitting near the witness may have been able to actually hear that something was happening, which could be the interference that's referenced here. But it's a very, very strange case, but I'm, you know, I said earlier that I'm surprised it took this long is with this technology out there, uh, I mean, people right now are doing all kinds of stuff using, uh, smartphones to cheat in all kinds of situations. And with technology being the way it is, you can now get in-ear monitors that are very small. And um I I I'm willing to bet this is not the first time it's happened. It's merely been caught. And it might not even be the first time it's been caught. It's the first time I've ever heard of it. But it's a wild case. But again, when you testify and you agree to give testimony, you are swearing that you're going to tell the truth. And presumably that's based on your own personal knowledge. And if you get in the stand you're truthful and you're asked, "Is this something you know for sure or is this something that someone simply told you? " So you can imagine if you said, "Oh, this is something someone told me. " Whether they told me now just now in my earpiece or last week, uh, boom, there it goes. Because it's not knowledge you have. It's it's knowledge you've been told and it's like depends on how reliable that person is who told it to you. By the way, I've mentioned before I love the language, the English language. I I occasionally butcher it, but I I use it quite a bit. And I have a lot of dictionaries and things like that, Oxford English dictionary and so on. And I was curious, it' been a while, but I remember I had looked this up, but Abracadabra, the famous magician's statement, right? Abracadabra. And I was curious where that came from. And I remember looking up and I forgot what the answer was. And it turns out that saying has been known and was used uh in a recorded form probably about 17 or 1800 years ago, maybe 1900 years ago. It's a very old phrase and they're not 100% certain where it came from. There's a bunch of different explanations and I know people are start typing out the explanations that they heard. No one's got firsthand knowledge of this anymore. But understand that even the experts in language say that there are several possibilities each of them a good candidate but nothing carved in stone ex except for the canopform abracadabra from 1800 years ago. So there you go. But again, Josh S, thanks a lot. But somebody's finally been busted wearing smart glasses in court while testifying and they're being fed answers to questions. They're being asked on the stand, and that's not a good thing. So, man wore smart glasses for high court coaching from the BBC. Questions, your comments, put them below. Talk to you later. Bye-bye. — Thank you for watching Leato's Law. Sometimes we lose the key to happiness, not realizing that the door is always unlocked.