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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Judges Rethink Advantages Of Tell-All Cameras

Verne Gay Newsday

Oh, no: Here’s a thought that’ll make us run to the kitchen cabinet for a couple of aspirin and a belt of Scotch.

By the time the next Trial of the Century rolls around, cameras may very likely not be allowed in the courtroom to record it for posterity - or for our viewing amusement.

This is not idle chatter. It is not an idle threat. (Or an idle promise, depending on where you stand on the issue of cameras in courtrooms.) It is likely to happen. No camera. Zip. The world will have to be content with “Days of Our Lives” instead.

In the wake of the O.J. Simpson trial, there has been endless discussion about the trial’s impact on race relations and the judicial process. But lost in the thicket of emotion and heat has been the fate of the inauspicious little camera, harmlessly tucked out of sight above the jurors’ heads.

That is understandable. Like the weather, Americans have begun to take courtroom cameras for granted.

However, Ira Reiner, who was Los Angeles district attorney for most of the ‘80s and who provided especially insightful commentary for NBC News during the trial, says, “I can tell you that I have not run across a single lawyer or judge who has not expressed the following view: that ‘the camera is the cause of the problem and we have to get it out of the courtroom.’ Not a one.” He adds, “As a result of this case … there will be fewer and fewer cameras in courtrooms, and I don’t know how long it will go on before it hopefully reverses itself.”

So what is “the problem”? Essentially, it is one of image rather than substance. But as everyone knows image is very important to our friends in the legal profession. There is a widespread impression - and a remarkably accurate one, we hasten to add - that the Simpson trial made the legal profession look very bad. Everything from sniping lawyers to bad hair days to a preening judge contributed to the impression of a legal profession out of whack. The thinking goes that if cameras were not turned on, then no one would have seen the silliness.

Steven Brill, chairman and founder of Court TV, says, “It’s inevitable that some judges will react to this - that ‘I’m not going to have Jay Leno doing jokes about me the way he did about Lance Ito.’ Unfortunately, unlike every other aspect of press freedom, in many states a judge can (bar cameras).”

And will.

Brill says the “odds are pretty good” cameras will not be allowed for the next trial of the Menendez brothers.

OK, you say, so lawyers looked bad. But did cameras affect the outcome of the trial or the judicial process itself? Good questions. Glad you asked. Brill has a ready answer: “In the time we did Simpson, from January through now, we did 33 other trials, from start to verdict. They started on time in the morning, and judges kept them going if the lawyers wanted to argue outside the presence of the jury. If the lawyers started getting redundant, they’d cut ‘em off.

In the Simpson case, there were 160 working days during which the jury heard 430 hours of testimony. That is not our fault. We were just showing people what was going on.”

There is, unquestionably, a “shoot-the-messenger” tone to the anticamera sentiment out there. “The curtain went up,” says Reiner, “and the American public … was shocked, and they had reason to be shocked. This was a trial that almost suffocated on its excesses. Now, there are two ways (the legal establishment) can deal with that - one is to address all the problems revealed by the Simpson trial, and the other is to say, ‘Nothing is wrong. It’s the damn camera.”’

But we, too, have mixed feelings on the damn camera. Courtroom cameras have become an indispensible part of the Fourth Estate - or an adjunct to it, if you will. It is far better to see courtroom antics and to draw one’s own conclusions than not to see them. Unfortunately, the camera has also become a tool for armchair voyeurs. Our TV nation no longer wishes to recognize bounds of propriety: Courtroom cameras have helped whet a prurient appetite that can no longer be sated.