Cameras in Court
| Author | Jeffrey Lehman, Shirelle Phelps |
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Cameras and courtrooms have long had an uneasy relationship. Blaming cameras for disrupting trials, the AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION (ABA) led the drive for their removal in the mid-1930s. The effort succeeded: all but two state courts banned them, and Congress prohibited them from all federal trials. But the television era ushered in new problems, and courts eventually were forced to grapple with the constitutional question of whether TV cameras are injurious to a defendant's right to a fair trial. In 1965, the U.S. Supreme Court appeared to say they are, in Estes v. Texas, 381 U.S. 532, 85 S. Ct. 1628, 14 L. Ed. 2d 543, overturning a conviction because cameras had denied a defendant his DUE PROCESS rights. But the Court changed its mind in the 1981 case of Chandler v. Florida, 449 U.S. 560, 101 S. Ct. 802, 66 L. Ed. 2d 740. Reacting to the permissiveness of Chandler, many states passed legislation allowing televised trials. And from 1991 to 1994 some federal courts conducted an experiment with cameras.
Photographers lost their place in court in the early 1930s thanks to a highly sensational trial, and it would take four decades for them to regain it. In 1934, nearly 700 reporters and photographers descended on the New Jersey town where Bruno Hauptmann was on trial for KIDNAPPING and murdering the baby of famous aviator Charles A. Lindbergh and author Anne Morrow Lindbergh. The trial judge allowed still photography, but was unprepared for the barrage of flashbulbs and the presence of a newsreel camera that was smuggled inside the court. Decrying the media circus that resulted, the ABA in 1937 called for prohibiting photography in its Canons of Professional and Judicial Ethics. At the same time the U.S. Congress amended the Federal Rules of CRIMINAL PROCEDURE to ban cameras and any form of broadcasting from federal courts. All but two states?Texas and Colorado?gradually adopted the ABA ban. Later, Texas permitted television cameras and it was a Texas criminal case that led to the next stage of development in this area of U.S. law.
In 1965, the U.S. Supreme Court took up the constitutional issue in Estes. This case involved a
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claim by a convicted swindler that the televising of his heavily publicized trial had deprived him of his right to due process under the FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT. The counterargument advanced by the state of Texas is still the one most pro-camera supporters continued to make into the early 2000s: cameras neither caused distractions nor prejudiced the trial and in fact served the public's right to know in a manner both educational and likely to promote respect for the courts. The Supreme Court sided with the defendant. Emphasizing the obtrusive technology used in the courtroom, from fat cables to the red light on cameras, the Court decided that the trial had not been fair and overturned the conviction. Yet, to many observers, Estes appeared to stop short of announcing that all photographic or broadcast coverage of criminal trials is inherently a denial of due process; it focused narrowly on the particulars in Billie Sol Estes's case. More important, observers noted, the decision looked to the future. "When the advances in these arts permit reporting by ? television without their present hazards to a fair trial," Justice TOM C. CLARK wrote for the majority in Estes, "we will have another case."
Developments in the 1970s changed the picture. Technology had improved, making TV cameras far less disruptive, and the electronic media was demanding the same access to trials enjoyed by the print media. The ABA became much more tentative about its hard-line position. Its Committee on Fair Trial-Free Press recommended that the ABA revise its standards. Encouraged to experiment, a number of states tried short-term pilot programs as a first step toward changing their laws. Then, in 1978, the Conference of State Chief Justices voted 44?1 to approve a resolution allowing the highest court of each state to set its own guidelines for radio, TV, and other photographic coverage. By 1980, 19 states permitted coverage of trial and appellate courts, three permitted coverage of trial courts only, six permitted coverage of appellate courts only, and 12 others were considering the issue.
The U.S. Supreme Court provided the decisive push with its ruling in Chandler in 1981. Chandler revisited the Estes decision of 16 years earlier and on quite similar terms: in Florida, two men convicted of BURGLARY claimed that televising their trial over their objections was a denial of due process. At the time Florida was following a pilot program for televising and permitting
The sensational 1934 trial of Bruno Hauptmann (center) for the Lindbergh kidnapping created such a disruption that cameras were banned from nearly all U.S. courtrooms in 1937.
still photography at state trials under canon 3A(7) of the Florida CODE OF JUDICIAL CONDUCT. The parties in Chandler read Estes differently: the appellants argued that Estes meant that the televising of criminal trials is inherently a denial of due process, whereas the state claimed that Estes did not establish any such constitutional rule. Seeking to clarify the earlier ruling, which had comprised no less than six opinions, the Supreme Court agreed with Florida. It held that states could provide access to the electronic media regardless of whether defendants wanted it. Moreover, the burden of showing how cameras have a prejudicial effect on a given trial would fall on the defendant. Chief Justice Warren E. Burger's majority opinion cautioned, "Dangers lurk in this, as in most experiments, but unless we were to conclude that television coverage under all conditions is prohibited by the Constitution, the states must be free to experiment."
The freedom to experiment brought cameras firmly into state courts. The ABA abandoned its prohibitive stance and more states began conducting experiments of their own. The launch on July 1, 1991 of COURT TV, a cable channel that provided televised trial coverage of newsworthy cases, sought to further legitimatize the use of cameras in the courtroom. By 1995, 47 states permitted some form of televising of state trials. But in 1994, the federal court system chose otherwise. The federal JUDICIAL CONFERENCE OF THE UNITED STATES authorized a three-year experiment in 1991 that permitted camera coverage of federal civil trials. Most judges who participated in the experiment, which involved
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Before televised trials became commonplace, there was The People's Court. This highly popular syndicated TV program ran from 1981 through 1993 and featured retired judge Joseph A. Wapner, of the California Superior Court. Millions of viewers tuned in daily to watch Wapner hear actual cases from small-claims court. The parties agreed to submit to his judgment of their sometimes petty, and often quite funny, disputes, which included claims for fender benders, complaints about plumbing jobs, and even a plaintiff who sued when a liquor store that had sold him a flat can of beer refused to give him a fresh one...
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