Justice Faces a Screen Test

By Richard Zoglin

Roger Ligon, a maintenance worker in Stamford, Conn., was on trial for manslaughter, charged with killing a man after a parking dispute. He pleaded not guilty, blaming the act on post-traumatic stress disorder -- the psychological residue of his combat experience in Vietnam.

The lawyers who argued the Ligon case had another sort of stress to deal with, arising from the crush of TV cameras that descended on the courtroom. Local stations covered the trial extensively. So did a soon-to-be-launched cable channel devoted entirely to judicial proceedings. A CBS crew was there too, roaming the hallways and offices as well as the courtroom. "The whole second floor up here was just one gigantic production room," grouses Bruce Hudock, who prosecuted the case. "I definitely found it distracting."

Hudock's view may be tainted by sour grapes: Ligon was acquitted. But the prosecutor's objections cannot be totally dismissed. Courtroom trials have become TV's hottest reality-programming trend. Forty-four states currently allow cameras in the courtroom, with varying degrees of restrictions (New York's law has just expired, as legislators argue over proposed revisions to it). And starting next month, TV will for the first time be allowed into some federal courts, on an experimental basis, for civil trials.

Real-life trial footage regularly turns up on local newscasts, on magazine shows like A Current Affair and Trial Watch, and occasionally as live drama on CNN. The legal bombardment is about to grow even heavier. On June 21, CBS will introduce Verdict, a prime-time series that will cover a different trial each week, using a mix of courtroom footage and interviews with the participants. (The Ligon case will be featured in one of the episodes.)

Courtroom activity will go round the clock with the July 1 debut of the Courtroom Television Network, a judicial version of CNN. The new cable channel (owned largely by Time Warner) will cover some trials live -- with play-by- play commentary from legal experts -- and others on tape in nightly wrap-up programs. The network hopes to premiere with the Los Angeles trial of four police officers charged in the videotaped beating of Rodney King.

For TV viewers bred on Perry Mason melodramatics, this proliferation of courtroom coverage is a healthy dose of reality. Steven Brill, chief executive of Court TV, predicts an educational windfall for people who watch his channel. "They will understand that the real world of law is not L.A. Law; nor is it Clint Eastwood catching a criminal and having some slick lawyer get the criminal off on a technicality." But TV's invasion of the courtroom raises tough questions as well. While video coverage may boost the public's understanding of the judicial process, is it quite so good for people seeking their constitutionally guaranteed right to a fair trial?

So far, many of the problems predicted by those who oppose cameras in the courtroom have not been realized. Even in states that allow televised trials, judges make the final determination as to whether TV should be admitted for a particular case; cameras are usually barred when the victim's identity needs to be protected, as in the Central Park-jogger rape trial. Nor, despite the / crowd at Ligon's trial, has TV in general turned the courtroom into the proverbial media circus. With tight ground rules, cameras and microphones can be kept relatively unobtrusive.

From the standpoint of the public's right to know, there is no good reason why TV journalists should be barred from trials while print reporters are not. Critics often complain that TV distorts the legal process by focusing on the most sensational testimony. But it is hard to argue that this serves the public any worse than screaming newspaper headlines, or TV reporters describing events from the courthouse steps. "It is a sorry state of affairs that today most of us learn about judicial proceedings from lawyers' sound bites and artists' sketches," says Vincent Blasi, a law professor at Columbia University. "Televised proceedings ought to dispel some of the myth and mystery that shroud our legal system."

Some attorneys contend that cameras in the courtroom can have a subtle and damaging effect on the trial itself. Witnesses may be more reluctant to testify, for example, if they know they will be seen on the nightly news by their neighbors. Seth Waxman, a Washington attorney who represented a white- collar defendant in one televised trial, says that jurors afterward made it clear that TV had had an impact; one juror said a witness seemed less credible because she kept nervously glancing at the camera. Argues Waxman: "Any extraneous factor that complicates the fact-finding process ought not to be allowed."

Among those who think such fears are overstated is Judge William G. Young, who allowed cameras to cover the barroom rape trial in New Bedford, Mass., that was the basis of the movie The Accused. Says Young: "I came away from that convinced that if you had careful controls, TV did not change the dynamics of the trial or the fairness of the trial to the litigants."

As TV coverage of trials becomes more commonplace, the arguments against it may fade away -- just as the old debate over TV coverage of House and Senate deliberations has disappeared now that C-SPAN is a permanent fixture. One of the lessons of the media age is that the TV juggernaut is hard to reverse. But it should not be permitted to crush constitutional rights as it rolls along.

With reporting by Daniel S. Levy and Andrea Sachs/New York