Blind Justice Gets a Seeing Eye

By Bennett H. Beach

The Supreme Court gives a green light to televising trials

For better or for worse, the U.S. moved a step closer to the day when the doors of virtually all courtrooms will be open to television cameras. The Supreme Court last week ruled that a Florida plan that permits television to cover criminal trials, even when the defense objects, does not automatically deny the defendant's right to a fair trial.

The decision seemed to be at odds with the court's "anti-press" image. Its author, Chief Justice Warren Burger, is known to dislike television. Moreover, in a 1965 case the Supreme Court overturned the conviction for swindling of Financier Billie Sol Estes at a notorious trial where the presence of cameras had apparently affected jurors and witnesses.

The occasion for the new court ruling was somewhat different. The defendants, who appealed their conviction to the high court after losing two appeals in Florida, were former Miami Beach Policemen Noel Chandler and Robert Granger. In the pre-dawn hours of May 23,1977, they showed up at Picciolo's Restaurant and stole $5,700. An insomniac ham radio operator six miles away happened to overhear their walkie-talkie conversation and recorded it. That tale was surefire television drama. Since the Florida Supreme Court had approved a one-year experiment with televised trials throughout the state, a single, unobtrusive TV camera and a still camera were allowed in court during the case. Less than three minutes of footage--all of it featuring the prosecution's case--was eventually aired on local TV stations. Even so, the defendants argued that the camera's presence had affected the behavior of all participants and thus had denied them their constitutional right to a fair trial.

Since Chandler and Granger did not offer any specific evidence that the TV presence had influenced witnesses or jury, it was relatively easy to deny that their particular case had been prejudiced. But the impact of the court's decision goes far beyond the fate of the two policemen. For the justices concluded that despite dangers to defendants inherent in certain kinds of TV exploitation, the solution is not an absolute ban on televised trials.

Rather, aggrieved parties should depend on guidelines like those in Florida that give a judge power to exclude cameras in order to protect witnesses and defendants most likely to be harmed. Chief Justice Burger's opinion cited Florida's special safeguards for children, sex victims, government informants and "even the very timid witness." If dissatisfied with the judge's decision on coverage, defendants are free to appeal. In closing, the court noted the importance of state experimentation, free from federal meddling.

The issue, which has been debated for years, involves the right of the public to be informed and educated and the rights of individual defendants and other participants to privacy and a fair trial. In balance is the question of how well televised trials will serve the public and how badly they may damage private citizens. Television coverage can offer viewers a vivid glimpse of what goes on in the courtroom. It can have a positive effect on participants as well. Alabama Judge Robert Hodnette is convinced that the filming of a murder trial he presided at "kept me and all the courtroom personnel on our toes." Adds Federal Judge Alfred Goodwin, former head of the American Bar Association's Fair Trial/Free Press Committee: "Photographing participants in the courtroom, rather than on the courthouse steps, is only a difference of degree."

Critics of TV reporting in the court are skeptical of commercial television as an educational device. "The press can cover trials now," says George Gerbner, dean of the University of Pennsylvania's communications school. "All TV adds is spectacle." Fred Friendly, former president of CBS News and now a professor of journalism at Columbia, agrees: "TV can wreck the whole thing if all it goes in for is gruesome detail." Last week's ruling, he says, will provide a real test of the maturity of broadcast journalism, particularly at the local level. Friendly and others think TV coverage could play a far more educational role if it included some appellate arguments, in which the emphasis is on legal issues, as well as trials.

Some experts fear that television will increase the risk of harm to a defendant, like someone charged with rape who eventually is acquitted but must return to society as an easily recognizable public figure. Other skeptics worry about the possible impact of cameras on jury behavior. "It's just impossible to predict how jurors will be affected," says Columbia Law Professor Benno Schmidt. "It involves guesses about human psychology."

Despite such concerns, last weeks decision is certain to increase already expanding television coverage. "A substantial barrier has been removed," says Miami Attorney Talbot D'Alemberte, who represents TV stations, which naturally favor the Florida plan. "Many states will take a fresh look at the situation." Already, 27 states allow cameras in court, though six of them restrict coverage to civil trials or appellate arguments where no witnesses are involved, and eleven states, unlike Florida, grant individual defendants the right to veto TV coverage if they like.

Significantly, perhaps, federal courts still ban cameras of any sort. The reason, says Perm's Gerbner, is that federal judges are appointed for life. Unlike state judges, many of whom face reelection, they do not stand to gain from television exposure, however brief. As recently as last October, the Judicial Conference of the U.S. reaffirmed its stand against cameras in federal courts as an inherent threat to fair trial. Almost 20 years ago, former Chief Justice Earl Warren told Friendly, then with CBS, that televison cameras would be on the moon before they would get inside the Supreme Court. It is more than 14 years, though, since a TV camera first reached the moon. --By Bennett H. Beach. Reported by Evan Thomas/Washington

With reporting by Evan Thomas/Washington

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