Why do objects in the animation appear so abstract?  Why do the people look unrealistic?

In creating an animation, the animators have to walk a fine line between conveying information in a way that will encourage the jury to accept the animation as an accurate and realistic re-creation of past events, while protecting the defendant from visual cues that directly tie his or her image to criminal acts.  In short, it’s to the benefit of the prosecution wielding the animation to make the animation as realistic as possible.  In an extreme example, if the killer in the Kastanis animation had the facial features of the defendant, the prosecution would have a powerfully unfair way to plant a visual link between the defendant and the crime in the minds of the jurors.  (Of course, forensic animation may benefit either the prosecution or defense, and Brighton animators successfully helped the defense counsel in other cases.) 

Rather than re-create a crime in cinema-like quality, forensic animation serves a more focused task.  In the Kastanis case, the goal of prosecutors was to demonstrate how evidence found at the crime scene pointed to a specific sequence of events.  As Kent Estep told Cadence Magazine in July 1994:

“We could have applied wooden surfaces to the walls to give them a paneled appearance, but that would have distracted jurors. That type of realism can do more to distract jurors than help them understand (the sequence of events).”

What was the outcome of the People vs. Kastanis trial?

The defendant in People vs. Kastanis was acquitted of all charges and released. 

This outcome surprised many because the evidence clearly demonstrated that the killer was either Kastanis or his wife, who was found dead at the scene.

Why didn’t forensic animation live up its promise and lead to a successful conviction? 

This question is asked of us more than any other.  There's no simple answer to why the prosecution lost what initially appeared to be an open and closed door case, marked by overwhelming physical evidence.  The defendant took the stand and delivered a solemn, believable, personal story.  The family of the dead wife testified on behalf of the defendant, unable to accept the possibility that their son-and-law was capable of murder.  And both the prosecution and defense teams made numerous tactical decisions based on larger strategies that contributed in ways obvious and subtle to the final verdict.

Because forensic animation had never before been presented in a capital homicide case, prosecutors had little precedent to follow.  In the few prior cases where forensic animation had been presented to juries, the evidence involved was much less complex.  In those cases, litigators could have replaced the animation with a series of static color displays. 

Lacking a game plan, the prosecution played the animation to the jury from start to finish without interruption.  Although the animation repeatedly paused for several seconds on important frames where a sequence of events had resulted in bloodstains or other crime scene evidence, prosecutors never paused the tape in order to clearly explain the link between animated events and factual evidence.   As the tape played, several jurors looked at the defendant in anger.  Emotional responses from members of the jury came as no surprise, but had a very short-term impact on jurors and did not serve the evidentiary goal of the animation.  As a result, the prosecution missed its opportunity to employ forensic animation in a decisive way at a critical moment in the trial.

“A trial isn’t the presentation of the truth, it’s a search for the truth.”
-  Kent Morgan, Deputy Attorney, Salt Lake City District Attorney’s Office