With construction work underway at the state capitol, the state Supreme Court hit the road today as it heard arguments regarding criminal cases.

State prosecutors sought to omit police body camera footage as evidence and a criminal trial, but a public defender is asking the state's highest court to rule that a trial judge should say the evidence and decide if it would serve the jury.

Our June Lefler has more on this report.

A lawyer appealing for a man accused of raping and strangling a woman says the trial court should have considered body cam footage from the scene as possible evidence for the criminal trial.

The Commonwealth filed a motion to eliminate to, and I quote, prevent witness opinion about the truth of testimony of another witness.

Specifically, opinions of Lexington police officers heard in the body worn camera worn by the officers.

The trial court issued an order and in the opinion, an order.

They said or she said that, she believed that it was a statement made by an officer under his breath that he did not believe the victim.

But then the trial court footnoted that statement and said, since the body cam was not played for me, I don't know for sure.

Justices questioned the Commonwealth of Kentucky, the prosecutor in the criminal case, why it would request to withhold evidence from a trial judge.

I guess the question for all of us is why wasn't the body cam footage committed during the evidentiary hearing?

Why didn't the Commonwealth seek to do that?

When viewing the hearing, what seems pretty clear is that everybody understood the nature of these statements.

So there was no need to view, because everybody understood the nature of the statement was to exclude improper opinion testimony.

So even though it didn't happened, it didn't happen.

The video is not in the record.

Everyone understood what the statements were, but the trial court is simply going to simply going off of what the arguments of counsel are.

Wouldn't it have been a better practice for the trial court to view the body cam footage and determine for itself whether or not the statements were as they were represented to be?

Justices also questioned a lawyer for the accused why any body cam evidence would be allowed in court.

Name a situation.

I think it would not be hearsay to to allow the verbal part of the body cam, the audio to be played to a jury when it has, when it's somebody narrating a scene or vouching for a witness or when would it ever not be hearsay?

The justices met outside their usual chambers.

Arguments this week are being heard at the University of Kentucky's Law School for Kentucky edition.

I'm John Lefler.