Objection! (43 page)

The newspaper representatives believe that the consent of the trial judge is full protection both to parties and to witnesses, and that no further requirement should be interposed.”

The media responded that the American public “has, by constitutional guarantee, the right to the most complete information as to what is afoot in its courts,” and that “provided the picture is made without disturbing the decorum of the court or otherwise obstructing the ends of justice, the publisher of a newspaper has the right . . . both to make the picture and to print it.” Another outlet opined that this right “is part of the constitutional privilege of the press to print the news, and also part O B J E C T I O N !

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of the people’s constitutional right to be informed by its free and full publication.”

While arguing over implementation, both sides agreed that regulation of publicity and camera usage was necessary. A final ruling by the bar in 1936 stated, “Proceedings in court should be conducted with fitting dignity and decorum. The taking of photographs in the courtroom, during sessions of the court or recesses between sessions, and the broadcasting of court proceedings are calculated to detract from the essential dignity of the proceedings, degrade the court and create misconceptions with respect thereto in the mind of the public and should not be permitted.” The press was furious, and the battle continues to rage.

Fast-forward to today: After many more legal skirmishes, forty-eight states now allow camera coverage in at least some court proceedings. Our courtrooms are again becoming the people’s court envisioned by our Founding Fathers so long ago. Since we, the people, foot the bill for the judges, prosecutors, many defense attorneys, and court personnel—since they work for us and carry out their duties on our behalf—we have a right to see what’s going on in our courtrooms.

If a circus is mounted outside the courthouse, then the camera is the cure, not the cause. Full trial coverage, not spin from jousting reporters and pundits, allows people to make up their own minds. With or without cameras, trials themselves will always generate great interest.

Some argue that the presence of cameras causes grandstanding and longer proceedings, but the facts do not bear this out. The case of California’s Hillside Strangler began in late 1981 and dragged on for nearly two years, while Charles Manson’s took nine months. Neither courtroom had camera access.

While those forty-eight states vary in their rules, they are unified in allowing true access to the people through the lens. Some allow extensive coverage, such as Alaska, California, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Michigan, North Carolina, and Wisconsin. Other states, like Alabama, Maryland, Nebraska, and Oklahoma, allow only appellate coverage or apply other restrictive rules. As of spring 2004, Court TV has televised 2 9 4

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nearly one thousand trials. Justice is marching forward, whether the U.S. Supreme Court notices or not.

G O I N G T O O F A R

But there are limits
to where cameras should be allowed to go. In 2002, Judge Ted Poe of Harris County’s 228th District Court in Texas agreed to allow an unmanned television camera to film jury deliberations in the death-penalty case of seventeen-year-old Cedric R. Harrison for the PBS show
Frontline.

The defense agreed with the judge’s decision, but prosecutors fought back on day one of individual jury selection. The state appeals court sided with prosecutors, stopped the trial, and ordered Poe to explain himself. The judge defended his decision by saying that the camera would be there for “educational purposes.” The case was ultimately transferred to another judge, and the camera was banished from the proceedings.

In my mind, Poe single-handedly transformed the most serious decision a jury will ever make into a (thankfully thwarted) reality show.

The desire to appear on a television series should not be added to the qualifications for jury service. As a matter of fact, the decision immediately altered the jury pool. Every juror who objected to being filmed was automatically thrown off jury duty. Do you blame them?

The law seemed squarely opposed to Poe’s position. The Code of Criminal Procedure states that no person shall be permitted to be with a jury while it is deliberating, providing confidentiality as to jury deliberations. In my experience, despite those renegade jurors looking for their fifteen minutes of fame, the great majority of those who serve take their duty extremely seriously and must decide the case without the threat of being judged, shamed, or ridiculed by TV audiences plopped on their sofas eating chips. They must remain immune from public scrutiny. It’s hard enough for twelve strangers to reach a verdict. If they had to worry about what their neighbors would think of them, their job would be impossible.

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The Constitution guarantees a public trial, not public jury deliberations. Can you imagine the new line of appellate attack by defense attorneys far and wide? Creating the precedent of allowing a camera in the jury room also will create a trend among criminal-defense attorneys. The new trial demand could be something like, “I demand to have a camera in jury deliberations to record jury misconduct. I want to have a videotape.” And then, on appeal, every facial tic, every nuance during deliberations will be a perceived ground for reversal. It will extend it to all civil and criminal cases.

I’m against this dangerous precedent. Again, the Constitution says we have a right to an open courtroom, not an open jury-deliberation room. Juries don’t deliberate in public for good reason. If they had to, they wouldn’t be able to be themselves and couldn’t express their thoughts and feelings. Another serious issue that arises out of filming jurors is the threat of reprisal, either real or perceived. A camera in the jury room takes away a juror’s anonymity. If you were on the jury trying a murder case and you believed strongly that the defendant was guilty but in the end he was acquitted, would you feel safe? What about a mob case where the mobster walks and finds out which jurors wanted a guilty verdict? This outrageously bad idea not only puts jurors in potential danger but also jeopardizes the fairness of the entire system.

Ironically, the term “in camera,” meaning “in chambers,” refers to closed-door proceedings. Such proceedings are appropriately kept away from the camera. Much of what is discussed in camera is about the admissibility of evidence and involves a myriad of issues, some of which may turn out to be inadmissible at trial. One example is the results of a search, later deemed inadmissible; another could be about the defendant’s rapsheet. In camera matters are usually treated as such because discussing them in open court could forever damage the defendant, the victim, or a witness. The same reasoning that applies to in camera proceedings applies to jury deliberations and to the jurors themselves. None should be put
on
camera.

If jurors want to make themselves known after the trial, as they did 2 9 6

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in the Simpson, McVeigh, and Martha Stewart cases, where many of the jurors granted interviews, that’s their business. If not, they should not be forced into the spotlight for doing their civic duty. Lawyers and judges have chosen to be in the courtroom. The same cannot be said about the victim or the jury. I believe they should be protected from having their images broadcast for the entire world to see.

We, the people, are granted two weapons with which to fight the government: jury service and our vote in public elections. These are the two powers the Constitution grants citizens to police their own government. Both are done in private so as to ensure total freedom of thought and honesty. Trial by jury is guaranteed three times in the Constitution. More than a million Americans serve on juries each year. To do so, they must overcome prejudices and differences in order to come together as a jury to render a true verdict. Juries are the souls and consciences of their communities. They have the power to correct the errors of government officials and are the bastion between three parties often at war—the defense, the judge, and the prosecutor. The jury is the heart, mind, and soul of the justice system. Jurors and their deliberations must be protected from the cameras at all costs.

T H E C A M E R A D O E S N ’ T L I E

When it comes to
seeking justice, television is one of the last forums where you can tell the truth. As I’ve explained in these many pages, you can’t always do that in the courtroom anymore. Often the very rules of evidence and judge’s rulings don’t allow the whole truth to be told.

The truth is caught by the lens without interpretation, spin, or elabora-tion. Excluding cameras from courtrooms keeps the workings of justice beyond the purview of the taxpaying citizen. Why should the truth be available only to those who can afford to go and sit in the courtroom?

What about everybody else?

I don’t want somebody else’s version of what happened. I want to O B J E C T I O N !

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see for myself every nuance of the defense, the demeanor of the defendant, the level of charisma or lack thereof of the lawyers and the judge.

I want to know when the jurors get bored and take a break or when they furiously begin writing notes. I want to watch when the defendant smiles or scribbles or maybe is forced by his own conscience to look away from the witness stand during testimony. I want to know that the justice system is doing its job every day—and I certainly want to know when it isn’t.

Thanks to the cameras in the courtroom at Jayson Williams’s trial, we knew more than the jury knew. We were privy to the idea that the shooting was more akin to a drunk-driving manslaughter than anything else, due to the former NBA star’s high blood-alcohol levels after a long night of partying. We also knew that the death of Gus Christofi was far from Williams’s first brush with violence or with guns.

Williams had spent the night partying with a group of Harlem Globe-trotters. Some of them told police that he seemed drunk and was driving

“fast, dangerous, and/or erratic.” One player in particular, whose demeanor I watched very carefully on the stand, told cops he said “a silent prayer because he was afraid.” New Jersey State Trooper Melvin Saunders II testified that Williams was slurring his words, that he stank of alcohol, and that he told the others in the house that night “not to say anything because [Williams] had a lawyer coming.” Paramedic Matthew Wilson testified that while houseguests were dressed as if they’d been out for the evening—which they had been—Williams was wearing a T-shirt and sweatpants, indicating that he’d changed his clothes after the shooting. It was later revealed at trial that Williams had wiped down the gun that night, then taken Christofi’s hand as he lay dying on the floor and placed his prints on the gun to set the scene as a suicide. Blood tests later put Williams’s blood-alcohol level at between .18 and .22, which prosecutors consider “severe intoxication.”

The jury never knew that due to a ruling by the judge. But the camera knew—and because of that, so did we.

The jury definitely got the sanitized version of Jayson Williams’s 2 9 8

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history, while the camera again told the truth. Williams won major rulings when Judge Edward M. Coleman refused to allow the jury to hear about his earlier incidents of violence involving guns, like the time he fired a gun repeatedly at a car parked at the Meadowlands Sports Complex. As I mentioned in a previous chapter, jurors were also kept from hearing from Dwayne Schintzius’s account of the time Williams shot his own dog.

There were additional alleged prior bad acts that were kept from the jury, but, unlike lawyers and judges, the camera can’t lie, withhold, or obscure.

The issue of having cameras in the courtroom surfaced again in the Scott Peterson trial in 2004. I felt it was a huge injustice that cameras were disallowed, because their presence could have exposed all of the posturing throughout the trial by the defense. At the same time, I understood that Laci’s family did not want her life and death exposed to the public in this way. Stanislaus County District Attorney James Brazelton presented the motion to ban cameras from the courtroom to the judge with a letter from Sharon Rocha, which said, in part, “The family of Laci Peterson [is] requesting that no cameras be allowed inside the courtroom. . . . Please don’t let memories be destroyed by televising the ugliness of the trial.” I understand how she feels, I really do. But cameras could easily have captured facts, both in court and on endless television programs and in chatrooms. All of that went undocumented, save for stories based on secondhand news. Those accounts were based on an individual’s spin and interpretation, not the actual testimony heard unvarnished for our own interpretation.

Of course, there was no end to the leaks during the case. We heard about the possibility that Laci vomited in the kitchen, leaving DNA evidence that necessitated the kitchen floor’s being remopped by Peterson. We were also told that Laci knew about Peterson’s affair with Amber Frey and had made peace with it. We heard endless theories, from Satanic cult murders to sexual predators being responsible for Laci’s and Conner’s deaths, none borne out by the evidence. Why? Because we couldn’t hear the truth—because there were no cameras in the courtroom. All we had was spin.

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F A C I N G J U S T I C E

According to the FBI
in 1996, there were more than 100,000 rapes that year, which meant that one sex attack occurred every five minutes.

That figure was most likely deceptively low, as many rapes and other forms of sexual attacks go unreported because the victims are too trau-matized, afraid, or humiliated to openly reveal the attack. Rape victims who do summon up the courage to come forward are generally and uni-versally reluctant to have their names exposed, much less their faces—