Scapegoating Cameras in Court

California, like 46 other states, allows cameras in its courtrooms under varying circumstances. Here judges have the discretion to allow or ban cameras from their proceedings.

Our intention is not to argue the law or the legitimate use of judicial discretion in these matters. We simply abhor the kind of convenient scapegoating we keep hearing about televised trials in the aftermath of the O.J. Simpson murder case.

The biggest current “distraction” caused by cameras in the courtroom is all the rigmarole about how they ruined the Simpson case, and about how that case provides all the ammunition necessary to bar cameras from other trials.

Topping the hyperbole charts is Gov. Pete Wilson, who now wants to bar cameras from all criminal courtrooms. What’s next, banning newspaper coverage, closing courtrooms to the public?

A South Carolina judge in the Susan Smith murder trial suddenly decided that “small-town witnesses” might be intimidated by cameras. A Sonoma County judge cited “media saturation” of the Simpson case in barring live and still cameras from the Polly Klaas murder trial.

And a defense attorney in the retrial of the murder case against Lyle and Eric Menendez successfully argued that live coverage would amount to the sanctioning of “cheap entertainment” whetted by the Simpson trial. Oh, please.

Each of those cases, along with the upcoming murder trial of the accused slayer of Tejano music star Selena, received tremendous pretrial publicity because of the public outrage attached to the crime or the name recognition of the victims or the accused. Summarily barring live trial coverage amounts to nothing more than locking that barn door after the livestock has fled.

There is much to examine about the Simpson case: Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti’s willingness to blame the “emotion” of the jury and not his own office’s ability to conduct the case; the issue of how one “problem” would not have been an issue in the case at all, if a certain racist cop hadn’t been kept on the city’s police force, much less promoted to the rank of detective, and Judge Lance Ito, too often looking like a substitute teacher bullied by the Bowery Boys on both sides. And there is the matter cited by one of the Simpson prosecution team’s lead legal experts: the need for dramatic improvement at the LAPD crime lab.

Everything else, like the unjustified criticism of cameras in the courtroom, amounts to obfuscation and a retreat from the public’s right to know.