25 ms·

Who's Afraid of Cameras in the Courtroom

17 points by grellas 16y ago

anigbrowl 16y ago
Anyone who thinks this is a good idea will be quickly cured by watching 5 minutes of Entertainment Tonight...or indeed, most local news broadcasts. I'm very much against censorship and think the 1st Amendment is one of the cornerstones of American life, but in a few matters I am unable to shake off my European upbringing. One is Court TV shows like Judge Judy where they re-enact small claims hearings for entertainment purposes. Another is mugshots and 'perp walks' released to or conducted for the media when someone is arrested. While the suspect very often turns out to be the right person, I'm just horrified by the fact that someone can be identified and displayed publicly as a prisoner before they've even been arraigned and entered a plea. It creates a presumption of guilt among the general public and (IMHO) is a direct cause of lawyers following up by holding press conferences and making statements designed to sway 'the court of public opinion'. Public opinion occasionally yields treasures like the Declaration of Independence, but is equally enthusiastic about everything from riots to the idea of buying a pet rock. Excuse my cynicsm...this topic brings out my grumpy elitist like few others!
- gills 16y ago
  * Article I Section 1. All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives. Amendment I Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. * Regardless of our respective opinions on the matter, I don't see an [honest] interpretation of the above which gives the court (a) legislative power to (b) abridge the freedom of the press [within it's on courtrooms].
  - epochwolf 16y ago
    (Don't add spaces to the asterisk) *like this* not * like this *
  - hugh3 16y ago
    I'm not sure that stopping you from carrying a camera into a courtroom counts as limiting the freedom of the press. Courtrooms are special places, and very different rules apply there. Heck, the judge doesn't have to let you in at all, if he doesn't feel like it.
    - petercooper 16y ago
      You're right, though I'm not sure it even needs to be a "special place" to count. Public toilets, prisons, and schools are "public" buildings but the press can't just waltz in and film anything to get a story.
    - dedward 16y ago
      The freedom of the press is the freedom to publish. That has very little to do with the methods used to gather the information in the first place, or the type of information gathered. Freedom of the press is a subset and clarification of freedom of speech - it is important that it is not treated differently. It is not the freedom for the "press" as an establishment to do whatever they want in the persuit of material.
      - gills 16y ago
        Freedom of the press is specifically intended to protect the ability of private citizens to document the actions of government. Freedom of speech protects the ability to publish those facts. In combination these rights are intended to hold government accountable to the citizens. The proceedings which take place in a courtroom are by definition actions of government, and should therefore be subject to whatever means of documentation members of the private press deem most effective for their ends.
  - seregine 16y ago
    The court is not Congress (or a legislature).
    - gills 16y ago
      Yes. That's partially the point.
  - anigbrowl 16y ago
    That argument depends on showing how photo/videography of courtroom proceedings would provide substantially more information to the public than textual or graphical reportage does now. Is the public going to be any better off by having access to recording of a judge's furrowed brow or the steely glint in a prosecutor's eye? Because past experience has shown that such trivialities are the sort of material that gets replayed over and over on TV. More seriously, consider the fact that people's attractiveness varies considerably, and a large part of our media is built upon selecting for visual attraction. What effect do you think that televised trials will have for plaintiffs, defendants, or witnesses who are ugly, or have a speech impediment, or whose attorney would come last in a beauty contest? It's a well-known fact that simply being taller correlates strongly with victory in presidential elections. Televised coverage of an emotive case mandates developing a 'charismatic strategy', and selecting for counsel and testimony based on their favorable visual impact - after all, this is the essential function of the casting process in narrative filmmaking (where I work). Once you go down this road you might as well go all the way: 'Your honor, I move for an extreme close-up of the witness, emphasizing his shifty gaze!' 'Objection! A cutaway to the defendant's cringing posture is clearly in order!' On a more general note, your literalist reading of the 1st Amendment would grant the press the right to do anything at all - burst into your home while you're on the toilet, raid your bank account, murder people on live TV, and start shooting wars in the name of public curiosity about the potential outcome. By this logic, anyone who declares themselves to be a publisher and has an inkjet printer or a blog is exempt from any constraints as long as they provide regular updates on their field of interest. Strict construction that leads to absurdities is no better than implicit assumptions about the judicial branch's freedom to establish standards for its own operation.
    - blahedo 16y ago
      In a similar vein, does anyone here think it even remotely possible that we could today elect a president who was (mostly or entirely) confined to a wheelchair? In the days before ubiquitous video, this was not a problem at all.
    - gills 16y ago
      Heh. You say "literalist reading" is if that's a bad thing! Surely you jest. In my opinion it's the only way to read that document, and on this point we obviously disagree. I will be more clear. In my opinion, freedom of the press is intended to perpetuate the ability of private citizens to monitor actions of government. Freedom of speech protects the right to publish those facts discovered by the press. You may twist that to include intrusion on private parties, or a slippery slope where lawlessness and slander rule, but that is not what I am saying. The foundation of my argument is that proceedings of any court are official actions of government, and therefore information that shall be in the public domain. If you want, you could add the word eventually to the end of that sentence, I don't really care. I'm not talking about beauty contests or "courts of public opinion", I'm only talking about accountability of government. In that context, if the press deems themselves, or their viewers the private citizens, best served by documenting the actions of government with the most sophisticated technologies available, where is the power of the judiciary explicitly enumerated to deny it?
nym 16y ago
Are good artists prohibited from drawing in courtrooms? I'm not familiar with the rules, so I'm curious if a photo realistic artist could draw the scene.
- anigbrowl 16y ago
  Short deadlines and photorealism are not very compatible.
  - shasta 16y ago
    Maybe we should require all video be run through a cell-shader pass before it airs
- anoved 16y ago
  Courtroom artists serve exactly that function - to sketch the scene in courtrooms where cameras are not allowed, for distribution through the news media. I'm not sure what the trend is but I wouldn't be surprised if it is a waning profession, given increasing number of courts that allow photography/video.
kd0amg 16y ago
It can't be fear of pre-trial publicity: Major trials are front-page news, with or without a video feed, and the days of the blissfully ignorant jury pool are long gone. It can still be fear of exacerbating an existing problem. That said, would this be mitigated by only allowing release of the footage after everything is over?
- epochwolf 16y ago
  > That said, would this be mitigated by only allowing release of the footage after everything is over? I'd recommend only releasing the footage if the person was found guilty.
  - dedward 16y ago
    How about neither - there can always be a retrial and/or appeal and/or exoneration by other means.
  - anigbrowl 16y ago
    ...and has exhausted all appeals, and... I know I'm being grumpy about this, but I just don't see what public good will be served by such a move. I can't think of any clear benefit the televised coverage has brought to the legislative process, and extrapolating from existing coverage of the courts I suspect the vast majority of airtime would be spent on catering to the most prurient sort of public curiosity. If one considers McLuhan's famous remark that 'the medium is the message,' it's hard to ignore the fact that the medium of television is awash in sensational trivia, relies heavily on emotional manipulation of the viewer to construct a compelling visual narrative, and frequently oversimplifies complex issues to the point of distorting the facts. Now this is no more the fault of broadcast technology or infrastructure any more than lies are the fault of the speaker's larynx or distant relatives; but the sad reality is that a great deal of television is the intellectual equivalent of a sewer, and whatever you drop into a sewer is going to end up getting dirty. It's a problem that law and the legal process are so obscure and inaccessible to the public - but not one that will be solved by turning courtrooms into studio sets.
    - 16y ago
mattmanser 16y ago
I don't get it, did a moron write this piece? In 1965...[the Supreme] Court found that cameras had a prejudicial impact on pre-trial publicity, affected the truthfulness of witnesses, and generally impacted (negatively) a defendant's fair-trial rights. 2 paragraphs later, without even trying to tackle any of these 3 points: Why, then, the ban? Um, read your own story man.
lucybecker 16y ago
It does seem that everybody is into this kind of stuff lately. Don’t really understand it though, but thanks for trying to explain it. Appreciate you shedding light into this matter. Keep it up http://www.aaamiracle.ca/ http://www.aaamiracle.ca/
techsupporter 16y ago
Perhaps having live streams of trial courts might not be the right idea(1), but if we can't videotape trial courts, I definitely think appeals courts should have A/V access. In large part, appeals courts are where the law is "decided," versus the outcome of a case impacting, usually, a single person. The actions, decisions, and debate found in appellate courts (including the Supreme Court of the U.S., as well as the highest courts in a given state) should be widely available. The Supreme Court's practice of not immediately releasing audio recordings of certain high-profile cases, but selectively releasing them in others, is troubling to me. 1 - Editorial: I think that all courts should have live A/V feeds automatically available, except in cases involving a minor or a victim of a sexually-related crime.

17 points by grellas 16y ago

Anyone who thinks this is a good idea will be quickly cured by watching 5 minutes of Entertainment Tonight...or indeed, most local news broadcasts. I'm very much against censorship and think the 1st Amendment is one of the cornerstones of American life, but in a few matters I am unable to shake off my European upbringing. One is Court TV shows like Judge Judy where they re-enact small claims hearings for entertainment purposes. Another is mugshots and 'perp walks' released to or conducted for the media when someone is arrested. While the suspect very often turns out to be the right person, I'm just horrified by the fact that someone can be identified and displayed publicly as a prisoner before they've even been arraigned and entered a plea. It creates a presumption of guilt among the general public and (IMHO) is a direct cause of lawyers following up by holding press conferences and making statements designed to sway 'the court of public opinion'. Public opinion occasionally yields treasures like the Declaration of Independence, but is equally enthusiastic about everything from riots to the idea of buying a pet rock. Excuse my cynicsm...this topic brings out my grumpy elitist like few others!

gills 16y ago
* Article I Section 1. All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives. Amendment I Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. * Regardless of our respective opinions on the matter, I don't see an [honest] interpretation of the above which gives the court (a) legislative power to (b) abridge the freedom of the press [within it's on courtrooms].
- epochwolf 16y ago
  (Don't add spaces to the asterisk) *like this* not * like this *
- hugh3 16y ago
  I'm not sure that stopping you from carrying a camera into a courtroom counts as limiting the freedom of the press. Courtrooms are special places, and very different rules apply there. Heck, the judge doesn't have to let you in at all, if he doesn't feel like it.
  - petercooper 16y ago
    You're right, though I'm not sure it even needs to be a "special place" to count. Public toilets, prisons, and schools are "public" buildings but the press can't just waltz in and film anything to get a story.
  - dedward 16y ago
    The freedom of the press is the freedom to publish. That has very little to do with the methods used to gather the information in the first place, or the type of information gathered. Freedom of the press is a subset and clarification of freedom of speech - it is important that it is not treated differently. It is not the freedom for the "press" as an establishment to do whatever they want in the persuit of material.
    - gills 16y ago
      Freedom of the press is specifically intended to protect the ability of private citizens to document the actions of government. Freedom of speech protects the ability to publish those facts. In combination these rights are intended to hold government accountable to the citizens. The proceedings which take place in a courtroom are by definition actions of government, and should therefore be subject to whatever means of documentation members of the private press deem most effective for their ends.
- seregine 16y ago
  The court is not Congress (or a legislature).
  - gills 16y ago
    Yes. That's partially the point.
- anigbrowl 16y ago
  That argument depends on showing how photo/videography of courtroom proceedings would provide substantially more information to the public than textual or graphical reportage does now. Is the public going to be any better off by having access to recording of a judge's furrowed brow or the steely glint in a prosecutor's eye? Because past experience has shown that such trivialities are the sort of material that gets replayed over and over on TV. More seriously, consider the fact that people's attractiveness varies considerably, and a large part of our media is built upon selecting for visual attraction. What effect do you think that televised trials will have for plaintiffs, defendants, or witnesses who are ugly, or have a speech impediment, or whose attorney would come last in a beauty contest? It's a well-known fact that simply being taller correlates strongly with victory in presidential elections. Televised coverage of an emotive case mandates developing a 'charismatic strategy', and selecting for counsel and testimony based on their favorable visual impact - after all, this is the essential function of the casting process in narrative filmmaking (where I work). Once you go down this road you might as well go all the way: 'Your honor, I move for an extreme close-up of the witness, emphasizing his shifty gaze!' 'Objection! A cutaway to the defendant's cringing posture is clearly in order!' On a more general note, your literalist reading of the 1st Amendment would grant the press the right to do anything at all - burst into your home while you're on the toilet, raid your bank account, murder people on live TV, and start shooting wars in the name of public curiosity about the potential outcome. By this logic, anyone who declares themselves to be a publisher and has an inkjet printer or a blog is exempt from any constraints as long as they provide regular updates on their field of interest. Strict construction that leads to absurdities is no better than implicit assumptions about the judicial branch's freedom to establish standards for its own operation.
  - blahedo 16y ago
    In a similar vein, does anyone here think it even remotely possible that we could today elect a president who was (mostly or entirely) confined to a wheelchair? In the days before ubiquitous video, this was not a problem at all.
  - gills 16y ago
    Heh. You say "literalist reading" is if that's a bad thing! Surely you jest. In my opinion it's the only way to read that document, and on this point we obviously disagree. I will be more clear. In my opinion, freedom of the press is intended to perpetuate the ability of private citizens to monitor actions of government. Freedom of speech protects the right to publish those facts discovered by the press. You may twist that to include intrusion on private parties, or a slippery slope where lawlessness and slander rule, but that is not what I am saying. The foundation of my argument is that proceedings of any court are official actions of government, and therefore information that shall be in the public domain. If you want, you could add the word eventually to the end of that sentence, I don't really care. I'm not talking about beauty contests or "courts of public opinion", I'm only talking about accountability of government. In that context, if the press deems themselves, or their viewers the private citizens, best served by documenting the actions of government with the most sophisticated technologies available, where is the power of the judiciary explicitly enumerated to deny it?

nym 16y ago

Are good artists prohibited from drawing in courtrooms? I'm not familiar with the rules, so I'm curious if a photo realistic artist could draw the scene.

anigbrowl 16y ago
Short deadlines and photorealism are not very compatible.
- shasta 16y ago
  Maybe we should require all video be run through a cell-shader pass before it airs
anoved 16y ago
Courtroom artists serve exactly that function - to sketch the scene in courtrooms where cameras are not allowed, for distribution through the news media. I'm not sure what the trend is but I wouldn't be surprised if it is a waning profession, given increasing number of courts that allow photography/video.

kd0amg 16y ago

It can't be fear of pre-trial publicity: Major trials are front-page news, with or without a video feed, and the days of the blissfully ignorant jury pool are long gone. It can still be fear of exacerbating an existing problem. That said, would this be mitigated by only allowing release of the footage after everything is over?

epochwolf 16y ago
> That said, would this be mitigated by only allowing release of the footage after everything is over? I'd recommend only releasing the footage if the person was found guilty.
- dedward 16y ago
  How about neither - there can always be a retrial and/or appeal and/or exoneration by other means.
- anigbrowl 16y ago
  ...and has exhausted all appeals, and... I know I'm being grumpy about this, but I just don't see what public good will be served by such a move. I can't think of any clear benefit the televised coverage has brought to the legislative process, and extrapolating from existing coverage of the courts I suspect the vast majority of airtime would be spent on catering to the most prurient sort of public curiosity. If one considers McLuhan's famous remark that 'the medium is the message,' it's hard to ignore the fact that the medium of television is awash in sensational trivia, relies heavily on emotional manipulation of the viewer to construct a compelling visual narrative, and frequently oversimplifies complex issues to the point of distorting the facts. Now this is no more the fault of broadcast technology or infrastructure any more than lies are the fault of the speaker's larynx or distant relatives; but the sad reality is that a great deal of television is the intellectual equivalent of a sewer, and whatever you drop into a sewer is going to end up getting dirty. It's a problem that law and the legal process are so obscure and inaccessible to the public - but not one that will be solved by turning courtrooms into studio sets.
  - 16y ago

mattmanser 16y ago

I don't get it, did a moron write this piece? In 1965...[the Supreme] Court found that cameras had a prejudicial impact on pre-trial publicity, affected the truthfulness of witnesses, and generally impacted (negatively) a defendant's fair-trial rights. 2 paragraphs later, without even trying to tackle any of these 3 points: Why, then, the ban? Um, read your own story man.

lucybecker 16y ago

It does seem that everybody is into this kind of stuff lately. Don’t really understand it though, but thanks for trying to explain it. Appreciate you shedding light into this matter. Keep it up http://www.aaamiracle.ca/ http://www.aaamiracle.ca/

techsupporter 16y ago

Perhaps having live streams of trial courts might not be the right idea(1), but if we can't videotape trial courts, I definitely think appeals courts should have A/V access. In large part, appeals courts are where the law is "decided," versus the outcome of a case impacting, usually, a single person. The actions, decisions, and debate found in appellate courts (including the Supreme Court of the U.S., as well as the highest courts in a given state) should be widely available. The Supreme Court's practice of not immediately releasing audio recordings of certain high-profile cases, but selectively releasing them in others, is troubling to me. 1 - Editorial: I think that all courts should have live A/V feeds automatically available, except in cases involving a minor or a victim of a sexually-related crime.