Where a witness purports to identify a person on security camera footage of events the witness did not observe, the identification is opinion evidence, not evidence of fact, even if the witness has some familiarity with the person identified. The critical distinction is between a witness who uses footage to illustrate what they independently observed (factual evidence) and a witness who interprets footage of events they did not witness by a process of deduction (opinion evidence). The decision in Smith v The Queen does not render all identification evidence from photographs irrelevant; relevance depends on whether the witness is in a better position than the jury to make the comparison.
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