After jurors watched a heavily edited videotape of a bald, gaunt, 49-year-old woman dying of lung cancer, attorneys for her family rested their case against R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co.
Attorney Norwood Wilner had wanted the jury to see a 16-minute videotape Wednesday that showed Jean Connor in the final days before she died in 1995.
But Judge Bernard Nachman asked to preview the tape before showing it to jurors in the wrongful-death case. It showed the frail woman struggling to take pills and pointing out a vein in her arm that had burst from the repeated use of needles for medication.
After just 90 seconds, Nachman said emphatically “Stop the tape! Stop the tape!
“To watch that much is emotionally overwhelming to me,” Nachman said Wednesday. “If I am so disturbed by seeing what I saw, I imagine a jury would be as well.”
The judge allowed Wilner to substitute a one-minute tape to show the jurors.
It showed Mrs. Connor taking off her wig, putting on a scarf and then slowly shuffling down a hallway.
