The plaintiff brought a motion under rule 34.19 of the Rules of Civil Procedure seeking permission to video and audio record the defendant’s examination for discovery and to tender the recordings as evidence at trial if the defendant could not attend.
The action arose from historic sexual assaults committed when the defendant was a parish priest and for which he had been criminally convicted.
The court considered the defendant’s age, medical conditions, incarceration status, and the possibility that he might be unavailable or unwilling to attend trial.
It held that videotaping the examination would not cause meaningful prejudice or inconvenience to the defendant and could provide a superior evidentiary record compared to a written transcript.
The court concluded that there was a higher-than-average risk the defendant might not be available at trial and that the trier of fact should not be denied the best available record of the evidence.
