Virtual Reality as a Medium for Evidence: Speculated vs. Realized Benefits and Harms

Charles Korey | January 30, 2025

Proponents of virtual reality (VR) as a medium for evidence in the courtroom have argued that it can bring many benefits to jurors, including enhanced empathy and better factual understanding. However, it is also speculated that VR could increase a juror’s biases or a false sense of accuracy. As VR technology advances, the legal field faces the challenge of balancing innovation with impartiality, paving the way for standards that will determine the future role of VR in trials. By examining VR’s speculative and actual impacts in evidence presentation, we gain insight into how this technology could affect the legal landscape further.

I. What Is VR and How Does It Relate To Evidence?

In its broadest sense, VR is “a simulated three-dimensional (3D) environment that lets users explore and interact with a virtual surrounding in a way that approximates reality, as it’s perceived through the users’ senses. VR technology primarily utilizes headwear that covers your eyes completely, and you can see a three-dimensional immersive world in a 360-degree spherical field of view. While VR technology is gaining popularity, many people don’t use or come across it indaily life. While VR technology has been trendy for recreational use, such as VR video games, VR has been implemented in many professional settings for training, education, healthcare, retail, real estate, and more. The visual, auditory, and even tactile aspects of virtual reality, ranging from vibrations to even full-body haptic suits, allow the immersion to feel more ‘real’ and thus allow these practical applications.

These practical applications have led to speculation and interest in using VR technology in the legal field. One of the primary ideas is that jurors can “experience” scenes of the case rather than physically going there. Jurors have shown a desire to visit crime scenes in homicide cases when the scene itself is relevant to the conviction. VR technology can help overcome the hurdles of photographs or videos by virtually going to the scene, as juries can ‘virtually witness’ the scene and simulated events. The power of VR technology to transportjurors to the scene of the crime can also help make complex cases more understandable.

II. Evidentiary Concerns with VR Evidence

Before addressing VR evidence’s potential benefits and harms, it is necessary to consider its admissibility. Federal Rules of Evidence, such as hearsay and authentication, present unique challenges for the admissibility of VR evidence.

Under the Federal Rules of Evidence, hearsay is an out-of-court statement offered to prove the truth of the matter asserted. For example, if trying to prove person A loves VR, person B testifies that person A told them, “I love VR.” In this example, person B testifying to person A’s statement is hearsay. Hearsay is not admissible unless it meets an exemption or exception in the Federal Rules of Evidence. While the exact use of VR evidence containing out-of-court statements would vary on a case-by-case basis, a secondary purpose of VR presentation of evidence would be admissible not for the truth but to clarify other admissible evidence. For example, if there is an admissible recording of a witness describing a crime scene, VR evidence could help contextualize their testimony and immerse the jurors in the scene. In this case, the purpose wouldn’t be to prove the scene looked exactly as described or appeared in VR but to clarify the witness’s admissible testimony. While this may prevent VR demonstrations from jury deliberation, they can still be shown in the courtroom.

Another unique issue that comes with introducing VR presentation of evidence is authentication. According to the Federal Rules of Evidence, to introduce evidence, a proponent must produce evidence “sufficient to support a finding that the item is what the proponent claims it is.” This presents a unique problem for VR demonstrations because a proponent must show that the VR evidence is authentic. For example, with a photograph, a witness can authenticate it by testifying to taking the photo or confirming it accurately represents its contents. However, because VR is created as a simulation rather than a direct capture, VR wouldn’t be able to be authenticated the same way as a photograph. A proponent would rely onFederal Rule of Evidence 901(b)(9) for authentication. Because this rule alone would not be sufficient, a guideline for admitting VR evidence is that the proponent should “demonstrate that a qualified expert created the VR demonstration using an accurate program and equipment. The proponent should also show that all data used to create the demonstration was accurate and that no unfounded assumptions were made. Lastly, the proponent must present witness testimony to “verify the accuracy of the final product.”

III. Speculated and Actual Benefits of VR Evidence

As VR technology has become cheaper, more mainstream, and more widely used, it is being used in actual cases, making the potential for its wider use more achievable. One of the primary speculated benefits was the immersive nature of VR, allowing jurors to engage deeper with evidence by experiencing crime scenes and potentially re-creating events firsthand. Another speculated benefit is VR’s potential to “appeal to a jury’s emotional and subconscious” responses through its immersive nature.

Real-life implementations of VR evidence have already illustrated some of these benefits. One example is from Marc Lamber and James Goodnow, personal injury attorneys who have implanted VR technology in cases to “transport a jury to an accident scene.” Lamber and Goodnow work with engineers, experts, and production companies to recreate the scene where an injury or death occurred. This has allowed jurors to not only visualize the circumstances, events, and injury but also empathize deeper with the injured person’s suffering and aftermath of the incident. This ability to ‘transport’ the jurors to the scene can be incredibly impactful as it may be hard for jurors to visualize the scene in an isolated courtroom. One study in Australia focused on how VR can affect a jury’s ability to get the ‘correct’ verdict. Researchers, legal professionals, police officers, and forensic scientists simulated a hit-and-run scene in VR and photographs, then split jurors into groups to test the differences. This study found that VR technology required significantly less effort than photographs to construct a coherent narrative, leading jurors to reach the correct verdict 9.5 times more frequently than those who relied on photographs alone. The immersive technology also gave the jurors a better memory of the critical details of the case; the photograph group had difficulty visualizing the events of the case from the photographs alone. Researchers said this study was “unequivocal evidence that interactive technology leads to fairer and more consistent verdicts.”

IV. Speculated and Actual Harms of VR Evidence

While the immersive nature of VR technology has brought speculations about potential benefits for the legal field, concerns have emerged about possible harm or shortcomings of VR technology as evidence. The primary concerns are about potential biases and costs. 

 VR technology might cause jurors to impermissibly judge parties, especially defendants in criminal trials, differently according to underlying biases that they hold. One study found that mock jurors who used VR technology to understand a criminal trial were more likely to judge a black defendant more harshly than the white one. These studies used VR to simulate scenes from trials and, through computer generation, swapped out the races of the defendants and tested the differences in guilty verdicts and sentencing. Salmanowitz’s study found that using an avatar instead of accurate visual representations of the defendants can reduce implicit bias based on race. The avatars were shown by only the handheld controllers visible in the virtual space. The VR technology made no substantial difference in the jury’s decisions. However, a study by Samantha Bielen et al.found that jurors may be biased using VR against non-white defendants, finding non-white defendants were more likely to be found guilty on the same evidence as a white defendant when using the VR. 

The cost of VR also presents a barrier to implementing VR technology in courts. In the Australian study, a researcher noted that using VR as an evidentiary medium is “expensive, especially in remote locations, and in some cases, the site itself has changed, making accurate viewings impossible.”  VR technology is expensive, with even the cheapest consumer-grade headsets costing around $500. Further, digital recreation of the scene starts at $15,000 but can “go up to six figures depending on complexity.”

V. Conclusion

While the balance between the benefits and harms of introducing VR as a medium for evidence may vary greatly case-by-case, overall, the demonstrated advantages in improving a jurors’ factual understanding tend to outweigh the drawbacks. Although speculation is a natural reaction to new technologies, as VR finds real-world application in courtrooms, its tangible benefits and harms have been clarified. This allows revisiting the initial speculation and more effectively addressing this balance and admissibility concerns that accompany VR demonstrations use as evidence. Increased use and advancements in VR technology could amplify these benefits by increasing empathy and accuracy and tampering with the effects of emotional bias.  With this evolution in VR technology, the potential for an immersive yet balanced use of VR in the courtroom grows, offering an even greater ability for jurors to engage with evidence to enhance understanding, minimize bias, and support fairer, more informed verdicts.