The Twenty-Year Taint–Still Misdirected

When I see commentaries like this Mankato (MN) Free Press opinion piece,  Our View: Cameras in courtroom should proceed, citing a 20-year-old  anomaly as the reason to bar cameras from courtrooms, I shake my head. 

It’s not that I disagree with it. I do. Instead, it’s why a trial from two decades ago remains the standard bearer, or maybe that should be gold standard of, or actually the great barrier, to permitting public access to the nation’s courtrooms?

Here’s the Manakato Free Press editorial opening paragraph:

“The O.J. Simpson trial may have made for gripping TV, but it isn’t what the public would see if cameras were allowed in more Minnesota courtrooms.”

Neither the Simpson trial nor “gripping TV” is what the public sees in Los Angeles, California, or the other 35 or so states that allow courtroom-camera coverage. Although California tightened its courtroom-camera coverage rules a year or two after the Simpson trial, to primarily give trial judges more discretion over whether to allow cameras in cases they presided over, that state has continued to allow camera coverage. Among the hundreds of trials in California since Simpson at which cameras were permitted was Phil Spector’s murder trial, both the 2007 trial and the 2009 retrial.

Dozens of high-profile trials in other states in the past twenty years have also been televised, most with much hoo-ha. Then there was the Oscar Pistorius trial in South Africa just this year, which was the first trial ever televised in that country. Although some were media clamors at trials such as the 2011 Casey Anthony trial, that was by no means the fault of cameras in the courtrooms. Rather it was the same kind of media hype that turned a number of trials into media spectacles, such as the 2004 trial of Scott Peterson for murdering his wife, Laci, and Martha Stewart’s obstruction-of-justice trial, also in 2004, neither of which had camera coverage.

There are far more compelling reasons than not to permit camera coverage of trials in this country. The Mankato Free Press cited one in the subhead of its piece:

“Why it matters: The more access the public has to how the criminal justice system works, the more they will know about it.”

Another, and I think a more important, reason is because it should be the public’s right to be able to observe the country’s and every state’s justice systems at work.

http://www.mankatofreepress.com/opinion/editorials/our-view-cameras-in-courtroom-should-proceed/article_5aef50b1-8dfb-5e49-b8b4-3b0ce19a07c6.html

Who’s Glued To Their TVS?

South African writer Susan Erasmus might be right in her recent piece,” Why we are so glued to the Oscar trial,” posted  on the South African news website “Health 24” that people are fixated on high-profile trials–particularly those with celebrities and sports heroes as defendants–the way they were public executions in times past.

But Erasmus is way off base when she asserts that the Oscar Pistorius trial in her home country has “grabbed worldwide attention in the same way people were glued to the screen for the O.J. Simpson trial.”

She’s correct about the Simpson trial grabbing worldwide attention. An example is a lawyer in Los Angeles who visited Simpson trial judge Lance Ito after returning from a trip that included Tibet. Even there, she said, all anybody had to say was “the trial” and it was instantly understood the reference was to the Simpson trial.

First, I have a pretty extensive circle of contacts and more than a thousand Facebook friends. None, however, mention the Pistorius trial or post anything about it that shows up on my Timeline.

That is not to say that people in this country and those I know in other countries don’t know about Pistorius, the fatal shooting of his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp, and I’m sure his trial is being followed by niche audiences, such as sports media, the Olympics community, disabled groups, the legal community and most certainly by South Africans. But it’s not a topic of daily–or even infrequent–conversation in general outside of that country.

I don’t know if any government official has asked the Pistorius judge to suspend the trial on election day as the California secretary of state did Ito, for fear the trial would contribute of a lower-than-normal voter turn out.

And we’ll see if television networks suspend or break into regular programming on Pistorius verdict day anywhere other than South Africa as it they did in the U.S.  when the Simpson verdicts came in.

I think “interest in” is a much better assessment of the non-South African public so far as the Pistorius trial is concerned, instead of “glued to.”

Despite Coverage, Pistorius is No OJS

Expert: Screaming gives Pistorius ‘major problem’ is the most recent headline I’ve seen about the murder trial of South African double amputee Olympic athlete Oscar Pistorius. I see headlines like that only because I set an Oscar Pistorius Google News Alert and because they occasionally appear on my AOL daily news feed.

For months before the Pistorius trial began, pundits predicted that it would equal or eclipse the 1995 O.J. Simpson criminal trial in terms of public interest and media coverage, which includes cameras in the courtroom.

While it has gotten extensive coverage, now that the case in deep in the prosecution’s evidence presentation phase, it is clearly nowhere close to the international phenomenon of the Simpson trial, or even the 2005 Michael Jackson child-molestation trial, both in California.

The fact that these are not nightly news or daily newspaper headlines in this country give evidence that the Pistorius trial has yet to rise to the level of an international notorious trial, a la Simpson and Jackson.

This anecdote is telling:

In the early stages of the Simpson trial, a lawyer friend of the trial judge, Lance Ito, told him about a trip she had just returned from that included a stay in Tibet where all anybody had to say was “the trial” and everybody knew without question the reference was to the O.J. Simpson trial. I venture to guess that nothing close to that is occurring with Pistorius in Tibet or most countries other than South Africa.

Also, during the Jackson trial, hordes of Jackson fans in countries around the globe not only followed it, but rallied in support of him in large gatherings and other venues. I don’t see that happening–either in support of or against–Oscar Pistorius.

It is, though, an interesting trial to follow.

Is Cameras in Pistorius Trial a Mistake

That’s what the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation is asking, according to a phone call I got today. Naheem, with the CBC, said the network is exploring that question in the wake of the judge presiding over the Oscar Pistorius murder case deciding to allow camera coverage of the trial, which, Naheem said, will be a first in South African judicial history.

After about a half-hour conversation, Naheem thanked me for providing such great background information and said she would let me know if the network would want to include me in a program on the subject, scheduled to air on Monday.

In a follow-up phone call, Naheem said the producers had decided to go with a Canadian voice.

By the time she called back, I had projected myself all the way to serving as a consultant on the trial, complete with envisioning traveling to South Africa. Oh well, it would have been nice.

In truth, it was really nice to have gotten Naheem’s call in the first place.

As for the answer to the question, is allowing camera coverage of the Pistorius trial a mistake. The answer is, that all depends.

Multiple factors go in to that phenomenon.

One, is the rules and guidelines the judge and court establish.

Another is the media acknowledging, understanding and complying with those rules and guidelines.

Ensuring that members of the media will face meaningful consequences if they violate rules or don’t observe guidelines.

Yet, another how firmly the judge/court enforces said rules and guidelines.

Another is anticipating potential problems and situations before they occur.

An important one is including media input at the beginning of the trial and media accommodation. planning process, respecting their needs and the jobs they have to do and including those needs into the logistics and process as much as possible.

It depends on much more than that, that’s a start.

Great detail is in my book Anatomy of A Trial, which is available from the publisher, University of Missouri Press, and Amazon.com.

Oscar Pistorius and Media-Created Bias?

When does media coverage of high-profile events tread into the murky waters of affecting the outcome of a court case or person’s reputation?

That question has popped up in the charges against and legal proceedings of  South African Olympic hero Oscar Pistorius, who is accused of killing his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp — just as it has in just about every notorious case since the beginning of time, or perhaps since Gutenberg invented the printing press.

That issue was at the heart of the change of venue that moved the Rodney King-beating trial from Los Angeles County’s San Fernando Valley just 25 miles up the freeway to the city of Simi Valley in the adjacent  county of Ventura. The impact of media coverage was also asserted in just about every other high-profile case in the Los Angeles Superior Court during my 1991-2002 tenure there as information officer and media liaison, including the 1995 O.J.Simpson trial.

South Africa has at least one anti-bias measure in its toolbox that puts the onus on the news media there that U.S. courts don’t have. They can hold the news media contempt, if it’s determined that coverage has created bias.  http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/feb/19/oscar-pistorius-media-south-africa-contempt

True, the criteria in South Africa’s contempt provision have become less intimidating  and subjective in recent years, thanks to a 2007 review of the provision by that country’s highest court. The threshold before the review permitted contempt charges “if a report ‘tended’ to prejudice the administration of justice.”

Such a measure in the United States would have chilled the news media right out of the country’s courthouses. It’s so arbitrary, I can’t think of a single trial of significant public interest in which one side or the other couldn’t have made a stickable argument for excluding media coverage or that might have led to the news media being liable for contempt.

The South African high court, however, amended the provision so that now “…the question a court must ask is whether there will be ‘real risk’ of substantial prejudice to the administration of justice,” which raises the bar considerably for all parties in a court case. It, in essence,  says that “The question must now be decided in the context of a balancing exercise between two competing constitutional rights: the right to a fair trial and the right to freedom of expression,” according to The Guardian article.

I see a substantial difference in the wording of the pre- and post-high court rulings. But even though the current criteria brings the South African standard closer to the Unites States standard, holding the news media in contempt for their coverage of a case rare to non-existent in this country,  thanks to the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment guarantee of a free press. And fewer than a handful of cases have been permitted retrials on the grounds that media coverage affected the verdict. Billie Sol Estes and Sam Sheppard, are the only ones that come immediately to my mind.

http://www.anatomyofatrial.com

Pistorius Creates S. Africa’s O.J. Moment?

When I read in The Telegraph that the downtown of South Africa’s administrative capital of Pretoria “was brought to a virtual standstill as legions of satellite trucks and emblem-emblazoned radio cars descended on the red-brick courthouse for what was billed as ‘South Africa’s OJ Simpson moment'”   during South African Olympian hero Oscar Pistorius’s court appearance on charges he murdered his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp, I cringed. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/southafrica/9873170/Oscar-Pistorius-a-single-charge-read-out-and-the-world-famous-Blade-Runner-crumpled.html

That Pretoria, the South African judiciary and the world would be subjected to a comparable spectacle is bad enough. But court magistrate Desmond Nair’s indication that cameras would be barred from proceedings, was truly consternating.

Read my book! I wanted to scream. Please read “Anatomy of a Trial: Public Loss, Lessons Learned from The People vs. O.J. Simpson”! I devoted an entire chapter to cameras, photographers and camera crews that covered the 1995 Simpson trial.  http://www.anatomyofatrial.com  The book also addresses the pros and cons of courtroom-camera coverage.

The crucial point, as I point out in “Anatomy”, is just where exactly the “media circus” is taking place.  A secondary consideration is whether courtroom-camera coverage helps mitigate or actually exacerbates a circus atmosphere — which, as astute observers of courtroom proceedings, both with and without camera coverage, know does not occur inside the courtroom.