Score 1 for the good guys,

That is just the point. Fueled by technology and a powerful victims' rights movement, "victim impact videos" are becoming staples in criminal trials nationwide. The increasingly sophisticated multimedia presentations depict victims from cradle to grave, often with soft music in the background, tugging on the heartstrings of jurors. Defense lawyers say the videos are highly prejudicial and have sought to have them banned.

But the Supreme Court this month declined to hear challenges to two such videos, including one of Sara Weir, a dark-eyed 19-year-old who was raped and murdered in 1993. The video contains more than 90 photos of Weir and is set to the haunting tones of Enya.

As a result of the court's decision, experts say the use of such videos will probably accelerate in coming years.

..."You're talking about 20 minutes that actually lets the jury see these people walking and breathing and moving," said Matt Murphy, an Orange County, Calif., prosecutor who helped splice together a 25-minute video of Tom and Jackie Hawks, killed in what authorities called a plot to steal their yacht. Jurors this month recommended the death penalty for defendant Skylar Deleon after seeing the video, which was culled from home movies and shows the couple smiling and swimming during their final vacation and holding their infant grandchild.

"I can see why these videos drive defense lawyers crazy because they actually balance things out," Murphy said.

Evan Young, the lawyer who failed to persuade the Supreme Court to take up the Weir video challenge, said she thinks they tilt the scales against defendants. "Without limits on the use of this technology," she wrote in her brief, "capital trials become theatrical venues, and the determination whether a defendant receives a death sentence turns on the skill of a videographer."

Once you get to the sentencing portion of the trial, a video is a great way to help the jury get a better picture of the life that was extinguished. You can see the victim as a child, his family, his friends and get a teeny, tiny sense of the loss that happened because he was murdered -- and since when are trials not "theatrical venues?" Both sides try to sway a jury and a judge by any means necessary -- including theatrics when they think it will work.

And a video helps do that. It also may lessen the burden on surviving family members, who may feel uncomfortable getting on the stage, under the glare of a killer, and breaking down into tears telling how much a loved one meant to them.

So, here's a little applause for the Supreme Court: they did the right thing by declining to hear the challenges to those videos. If there are any soft-on-crime Democrats in Congress who want to ban these videos, let them write a law and get it passed if they have the guts. If not, then there's no reason this technology shouldn't be used to help speak for the victims.