Judging the Judge

Newsmen who try to overcome the judiciary's traditional ban on photographing trial action risk a charge of contempt of court. Last week, after an Omaha court let press and TV photographers shoot at will, the familiar legal weapon was turned against the judge himself.

At the start of a heavily publicized murder trial in February, Judge James T. English, 64, warned photographers that they could take courtroom shots only during recesses and could not shoot the defendant even then. But as it turned out, Judge English did not object when the Omaha World-Herald quietly photographed Defendant George D. Jones in the courtroom during recesses, or when TV cameras caught him from the corridor while the trial was actually in session. Nor did Judge English complain when TV and World-Herald cameramen whirled and clicked while the jury returned a verdict of guilty of murder in the second degree. But 60 miles away in Lincoln, State Attorney General Clarence S. Beck watched a TV film of the scene and exploded ("There was the clerk of the court reading the verdict--live with sound, yet"). Last week Attorney General Beck charged before the Nebraska Supreme Court that

Judge English had committed contempt of court by violating Canon 35 of the Canons of Judicial Ethics (adopted by the court in 1951), which forbids courtroom photography as detracting from a trial's "dignity and decorum."

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