“Audio-Visual Justice: Public Testimony & Vulnerable Witnesses in a Guinean Trial” (Professor Nomi Dave, University of Virginia)

This paper explores the stakes of audibility and visibility for victim-witnesses of sexual assault in highly mediated trials. In the Republic of Guinea, a high-profile criminal trial is currently underway, in which survivors of sexual violence have testified against leaders of a previous regime. While the trial is being televised in Guinea and avidly followed, special protections for these witnesses mean that they are entitled to testify in closed proceedings. But, in practice, their voices and faces have been captured and broadcast, both willingly and not. The Procès du massacre du 28 septembre 2009 reveals the tensions between principles of open justice and the needs of vulnerable witnesses, as audibility and visibility hold varied and complex meanings. How does publicity shape access to justice for vulnerable witnesses? Whose interests does audio-visibility serve? Who is a public trial ultimately for? As audiovisual technologies transform legal practice, I consider how evidence – in new and old media and in the courts – can be mobilized and interpreted in radically different ways, and how it shapes justice expectations and outcomes for vulnerable witnesses and for the listening and viewing public.

Nomi Dave is a researcher and former lawyer, bridging sound studies, anthropology, and law. She researches voice, silence, and listening in law and politics, with a focus in the Republic of Guinea. Her current project involves advocacy and creative work on testimony and gender violence in Guinea, including a documentary film she is co-producing with the filmmaker Bremen Donovan. Nomi is the author of The Revolution’s Echoes: Music, Politics, and Pleasure in Guinea (2019, Chicago), which was awarded the 2020 Ruth Stone Prize from the Society of Ethnomusicology. She earned her DPhil in Music from Oxford University and is currently Associate Professor of Music at the University of Virginia, where she co-founded and co-directs the Sound Justice Lab. In 2023-24, she is an academic visitor at Oxford’s Centre for Socio-Legal Studies.