Iowa Supreme Court building.
The Iowa Supreme Court has overturned a lower court ruling that would have allowed witnesses in a Dubuque County case to testify via video link. Zacariah Rogerson wrecked his car on August 13th of 2012 and in the process three passengers in the vehicle suffered multiple injuries.
He was charged with four counts of unintentionally causing serious injury by intoxicated use of a motor vehicle. The state sought to have witnesses who lived out of state and officials with the state crime lab in Ankeny testify via a two-way videoconferencing system. Rogerson appealed, saying the videoconferencing would violated his Six Amendment right to confront the witnesses against him.
The Iowa Supreme Court ruled that the state did not show any exceptional circumstances for using the videoconferencing testimony. And it said while technology now makes such testimony very close to a face-to-face confrontation, the court does not believe it is the constitutional equivalent of the confrontation envisioned in the Sixth Amendment.
See the full ruling here: Video testimony PDF