One of my favorite software programs is Street Atlas 4.0. This program has every street in the United States on a single CD-ROM. Street Atlas costs approximately $ 45.00. I have used the program to locate a street or location that is significant to my client's case. I then print out the resulting map so that I can use it in court. I believe that Street Atlas helps me produce inexpensive but effective demonstrative evidence exhibits for trial.

Recently I represented a client in an attempted murder case. I used Street Atlas to prepare an accurate map depicting the location of the shooting and location of the house where the defendant's friend lived in a matter of minutes. This map was important because the defendant's friend took photographs of him shortly after he arrived at his house which established the injuries inflicted and the severity of the beating. I wanted to blunt any contention by the prosecution that the defendant's injuries were not severe enough to keep him from seeing inorder to drive an automobile.

You can locate a street by name and obtain close-up or distant view of the selected area. To prepare the my exhibit, I started the program and found the area where the woman's house was located. I then saved this map to a computer file. I then used the Paint program that comes with Windows 95 to annotate the map I had obtained from the Street Atlas. When I was finished with my annotations, I printed the map on an HP 855 C color printer. I was able to produce this demonstrative evidence exhibit in a matter of minutes. The following screen snapshots depict the software program interface and the map that I prepared for the trial.