-
Chapter 14 . . . And Beyond
- University of Missouri Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
Chapter 14 . . . And Beyond Shortly after the 1997 Simpson wrongful-death civil trial, Court Manager magazine ran an article I wrote,titled“What a Difference a Lens Makes.” In it I contrasted Simpson’s two trials, only one of which was televised, and the Menendez brothers’ two trials, of which only one was televised. Of note was the media’s reaction to a judge’s meeting with a juror. While they had shown an insatiable appetite for information and tidbits about the Simpson criminal jurors, the press demonstrated a marked lack of interest in the civil jury. That was exemplified in an incident near the end of that trial when the judge instructed a juror who had sent him a note to confer with him and the attorneys at sidebar.Court was in session,and the media were present. None, however, asked about the subject of the juror’s note or the sidebar conference, and the news carried no reports about it that night or the next day.By contrast,if a juror in the criminal trial so much as burped, the press would have been full of questions. When asked about the media’s lack of curiosity about the civil juror’s sidebar conference with the judge and lawyers,a print reporter said,“Well,there’s no camera in here.No one saw it, so no one asked me about it.”1 Based on that exchange and the overall premise of the article, readers might conclude that I would argue against courtroom cameras. But I didn’t and still don’t, although I think there should be conditions. Former California First Amendment Coalition general counsel Terry Francke has it right in 189 saying that cameras should be the norm and should be standard issue in all courtrooms. “Whether they are taping or not, and I think no one should be told when they are taping,”says Francke,now general counsel for the open-government advocacy group Californians Aware.“Make them part of the architecture, as they are so many other places now. But don’t call attention to the fact [that they are] taping.”2 The conditions I would add are that • each camera be limited to a fixed, medium-wide shot of the courtroom well that shows all of the trial participants, except the jury (only in the state of Florida may jurors be photographed), minors, undercover law enforcement officers, and other individuals on a case-by-case basis in exceptional and rare situations, • courts, not the media, own the cameras, • cameras be installed and controlled by the court, • media be provided immediate and unrestricted access to photographs, footage and/or broadcast signal, • the coverage be routinely streamed onto the Internet. Enabling public access that way would help minimize what I consider the biggest bugaboo in courtroom-camera coverage, and that is the way the media use cameras to exaggerate, embellish, and even create drama. Whether or not LosAngeles Superior Court Judge Larry Paul Fidler knew about my article, he came up with a similar idea four years after its publication . Amid much head-shaking by his judicial colleagues, Fidler said the media could televise the 2001 trial of Sara Jane Olson. Olson,the exemplary wife of a St.Paul,Minnesota,physician and mother of two, was secretly Kathleen Soliah, a 1970s radical Symbionese Liberation Army member charged with conspiracy to commit murder by planting a bomb under a LosAngeles police car.Fidler was going to let the media install two small cameras on his courtroom wall that could get shots of proceedings without violating prohibitions against showing jurors or spectators. (The ban on photographing spectators was included in the 1997 state electroniccoverage rule revision.)3 That trial was aborted,however,when Olson struck a plea deal.4 A second chance came Fidler’s way six years later when the trial of celebrated record producer Phil Spector unfolded in his courtroom. Despite a few unexpected legal grenades and lawyer shenanigans, televising that trial went off without 190 Anatomy of a Trial [34.205.246.61] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 20:44 GMT) much of a hitch.Granted,it had minuscule onsite media presence during the bulk of the trial compared to the mega-media phenomena that Simpson and Jackson became.But neither that trial nor subsequent proceedings,when the first one ended with a hung jury,5 came close to the circus that camera critics had predicted. Although criminal defense lawyers have historically opposed camera coverage of...