The Prince and the Photo

I've recently been watching the ITV dramatisation of Prince Andrew and the infamous interview. Still, realistically, it should be 'the infamous photo' because that is the key evidence supporting Virginia Giuffre's case.

Ms Giuffre sued Prince Andrew for allegedly sexually assaulting her when she was 17 after disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, the former partner of Ghislane Maxwell, trafficked her. Prince Andrew?denied the claims.

Had Prince Andrew not paid Ms Giuffre ￡12 million, we could have seen the first-time Legal Admissibility and Evidential Weight, i.e. BS10008, finally make it to a court.

BS 10008 is the British Standard that outlines best practices for managing and storing electronic data. It is designed to help you verify and authenticate all your information to avoid the legal pitfalls of data storage. BS 10008 also outlines best practices for transferring electronic data between systems and migrating paper records to digital files. It also gives guidelines for managing the availability and accessibility of any records required as legal evidence.

Within the documentary, Prince Andrew, his relatives, and Ghislaine Maxwell are convinced that the photo is a fake. Still, multiple aspects of the photo give it evidential weight:

1. The thumb in the uncropped image—this recalls pre-digital photos when you took a photo with a film and did not see the outcome until the photos had been printed.
2. The images of the back of the photo in which we see ‘000 #15 13Mar01 Walgreens One Hour Photo’, insinuating the picture was developed in a one-hour service on 13 March 2001, at a branch of Walgreens – similar to Boots in the UK. This would only be something that could be found on an original.
3. The date fits with the time in question, which was March 10, 2001, so the photo was printed three days later at Walgreens.
4. The picture of the photo could be seen that it had naturally deteriorated since it was over 20 years old. It wasn't a fresh print.

The photo itself was said to be fake, but only a few people would have handled the original. Therefore, Prince Andrew had only ever seen ones made digital via scanning or photo of a photo, which is where Legal Admissibility and Evidential weight came into play. In a court scenario, the original appears to be in the safe hands of Ms Giuffre, who never let the photo out of her sight so she could present it if needed but you'd still need evidence that it was a valid image. If the original was no longer around. There was plenty of evidence to show that it was original, as shown by the photos above, which the journalists took of the image.

According to the documentary, the decision to pay the ￡12 million payment was out of Prince Andrew's hands. Still, I feel it a greater injustice that they were even allowed to make payment without admission of guilt to just make Ms Giuffre go away rather than clear Prince Andrew's name all because of a jubilee. I wanted Legal Admissibility and Evidential Weight in court, dagnabbit!