Playing the Crowd
MIKVA, ABNER
Playing to the Crowd Why televising trials will turn our courtrooms into circuses By Abner Miltva LAST MONTH, THE U.S. HOUSE of Representatives passed a bill authorizing every federal...
...Televising the trial events makes it harder to achieve that difficult goal...
...I saw a spectacle that will haunt the legal and criminal justice systems for years as to what a criminal trial should not be...
...The bill has a long way to go before it becomes law ’ (there are many other far-reaching, unrelated, and controversial changes in court procedure set forth in the bill, and the President has already indicated it is a candidate for his veto), but it will undoubtedly give comfort to Ronald Goldfarb, author of TV or Not TV...
...I confess that I did not watch a lot of the O.J...
...I hope he is as wrong about his conclusion as he is about the way he comes to it...
...Policy decisions are supposed to be as broadbased as possible - not because we are sure that better decisions will result - but because whatever the decision, right or wrong, there is a legitimacy to a broad-based, fully participatory decision...
...He freely predicts that all courtrooms in the future will be equipped with cameras...
...In Goldfarb‘s progression, all the “trials of the century”- the alienation-of-affection trial of Henry Ward Beecher, the Harry Thaw-Evelyn Nesbitt trial that has just been rejuvenated as a part of the musical “Ragtime,” the Scopes theory of evolution trial, the Bruno Hauptmann kidnapping trial - were impacted by the heightened publicity of an expanding communication technology...
...ABNER MIKVA, currently a profssor at the UniversiQ of Chicago, has served as both a US...
...television is just the newest medium that expands the universe of people who can be a part of that public...
...According to Goldfarb, all high-profile trials are impacted by the publicity given to them...
...Playing to the Crowd Why televising trials will turn our courtrooms into circuses By Abner Miltva LAST MONTH, THE U.S...
...I have known a lot of appointed judges over the years, and I can only hope...
...While he seems to answer that in the affirmative, he is less than clear as to whether the consequences should concern us...
...The presence of a large, sympathetic audience was the equivalent of today’s modern television audience...
...A public trial is one of our society’s values...
...We want as much public participation as we can get in the congressional process...
...While it may take something like the House bill I referred to earlier to persuade Justice Antonin Scalia, Mr...
...To say that the impact of television on the Simpson trial was only a difference in degree from the impact of the courtroom crowds in the John Peter Zenger trial is like saying that my grandson and Michael Jordan both play basketball...
...He starts off with the famous case of John Peter Zenger in 1734, whose trial helped to shape our commitment to a free press...
...Goldfarb‘s prediction about the future might occur in the appellate courts...
...But we have no reason to expect the other actors in a court drama to be so impervious...
...That is emphatically not the way we believe that court decisions should be made...
...We do not want the criminal justice system of the French Revolution, where the crowd in the square would signal by their thumbs whether or not the accused should get the guillotine...
...There is a lot in Mr...
...Since Goldfarb is a practicing litigator, he has to contend with the question that frames the debate about cameras in the courtroom: Does TV affect the procedures or the results of the trial...
...While the absence of the Klieg lights and the large cameras have made it easier to ignore the physical presence of television apparatus, it does nothing about the awareness that the person being televised will have their likeness, their words, their gestures, their ear-scratching spread nationwide...
...I must have missed something...
...HOUSE of Representatives passed a bill authorizing every federal judge to decide whether or not to allow the televising of the trial in every particular case...
...While there would not be much interest in most appellate cases, the salutary effects far outweigh any downside...
...The decisional process of the courts and the Congress is altogether different...
...the more public interest, the more it can impact the way the trial comes out...
...To Goldfarb, television is just another new medium that adds to the noise about a trial, but doesn’t change its nature...
...None of his rulings will ever be reviewed by an appellate authority...
...Elected judges present still another variation on the theme...
...I find the chart showing the number of states already allowing cameras in the courtrooms a very troubling statistic...
...I saw a trial that went on for months longer than it should have because the participants seemed to be enjoying all of the attention...
...At some point, it’s more than a difference in size...
...Televising appellate proceedings, including those of the Supreme Court, does not create the problems that would occur in the trial courts...
...Simpson trial (it was too painful...
...I wonder how many elected trial judges are using television in the courtroom ?or similar purposes...
...Simpson trial - and I don’t even spoon in the verdict...
...Goldfarb‘s book about the people’s right to know...
...Most parties have not been in the business of making television commercials for Hertz...
...I saw the greatest travesty of justice imaginable in the O.J...
...We can hope that judges, especially non-elected judges, can become impervious to such consequences...
...We don’t want an interactive televisick system to allow lawyers to tell the judge or the jury that “over two-thirds of our viewers think you should rule for the plaintiff...
...court of appeals...
...I made many of those same arguments myself as a member of Congress...
...C-SPAN watchers have become aware of the phenomenon of the members of Congress who use the availability of the television camera to get in a few licks for reelection while supposedly debating a bill before Congress...
...While the lawyers may not be quite as unexposed, it is hard not to think of how useful a telegenic performance would be to future career...
...But I think he is wrong, and I sure hope he is wrong, about the trial courts...
...It follows that cameras in the courtroom are OK...
...I saw witnesses who paid more attention to the color of their ties than the color of their testimony...
...For the witnesses and the jurors and the parties, it may well be their first exposure to nationwide scrutiny...
...representative fiem Illiaois and a chief judge ’ of the D.C...
...The advocates of television in the courtroom argue that modern television techniques are so unobtrusive that any adverse impact can be avoided...
...I saw more bad information distributed about the criminal justice system by instant experts who should have known better - and by a judge who may have been the second biggest beneficiary of the not p l t y verdict...
...While television coverage of the Congress has not been without its cost (Newton Gingrich’s success can be directly traced to his capacity to persuade C-SPAN audiences that his colloquies with one or two of his buddies, before an empty chamber, after the House had adjourned, were of great moment), the legislative process will survive...
...We expect judges and jurors to make decisions that may well be unpopular - antimajoritarian...
...Johnny Cochran’s performance was so good that the criminal bar may have lost a valuable practitioner...
...But I watched enough to see lawyers who were hamboning it up, not for the jury, but for the 6 o’clock news...
...I saw a judge who could not reclaim his turf sufficiently to preside over the trial, but seemed rather to be overwhelmed by his inability to compete with all the star power of lawyers and defendant...
...I am not as sanguine about the judicial process...
Vol. 30 • July 1998 • No. 7
