Keeping Public Blind Doesn’t Serve Justice

Before hitting the intellectual heights of a law conference last week, I sought a dose of reality in the Los Angeles Criminal Courts Building.

Up on the ninth floor, the scene of the O.J. Simpson murder trial, I wandered into Department 106, where Superior Court Judge Edward A. Ferris was presiding over the trial of Jose Santa Maria.

It was, the prosecution said, another story of love gone bad. Santa Maria was charged with shooting and killing Pablo Camargo, whom he saw with his wife early last year. Santa Maria’s wife, Catalina Cedillo, was testifying about her relationships with the two men. An interpreter was at her side. Santa Maria had one, too, for neither spoke English. I was the only reporter present, in fact the only spectator.

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We didn’t talk about such trials at the National Judicial College’s conference on the media and the courts in Reno, Nev., although some of the concepts discussed would affect the Jose Santa Marias of the world.

Big ticket trials dominated our discussions at the college, which conducts classes for judges. Lawyers, journalists and judges spent three days discussing cameras in the courtroom, ethics, responsibility, jury sequestration and other issues raised by the Simpson trial and other big cases.

Every convention is like a play. In this one, the judges and lawyers, who put on the show, were the heroes and the reporters the villains, especially us Simpson trial veterans. The story line was how can we reporters modify our bad behavior to make life tolerable for the beleaguered and heroic judges and their lawyer allies.

Personally, I thought the reporters behaved admirably, considering we had been invited to be sacrificed on the altar of justice. This was especially true Wednesday night when the guests were entertained after dinner by Professor Clay Jenkinson of the University of Nevada, Reno, who, wearing a Thomas Jefferson costume and wig, portrayed the late president giving a speech and a press conference.

Not a single reporter in the room, not even one of us Simpson trial regulars, asked him the question on everyone’s mind: What did he have to say about Sally Hemings, the slave who reputedly became Jefferson’s lover?

The Simpson trial was treated as a family scandal the relatives wanted to put behind them. “We will try to keep the O.J. trial out of the proceedings,” said former network correspondent Sander Vanocur, a panel moderator who clearly feels his old business has sunk into the pits. “The late unpleasantness,” is what C-SPAN’s Bruce D. Collins called it.

Yet the conference’s cutting edge issue--the televising of court proceedings--emerged from the Simpson case. The reporters overwhelmingly favored television. The judges and lawyers just as fervently opposed it.

In small work sessions, we journalists were urged to reach a consensus with the judges and lawyers on television, to agree on limits that would make the practice more acceptable to the jurists. Most journalists held firm for no limits.

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Most of us felt that giving ground on TV would lead to surrender on other issues, such as access to important evidence and documents that are being increasingly sealed by judges at the request of lawyers. We were reminded at the conference that settlements in product liability suits are being sealed, denying the public knowledge of potential dangers. These must be open for public debate because, as Linda Deutsch of the Associated Press said, “The great issues of our time are always decided in court.”

The assumption of the conference was that we’re all on the same team. I don’t agree. The judges’ job is to run the courts. The lawyers are their allies. Together, they comprise a legal club, comfortable in their shared education and values. The reporters are outsiders, watchdogs of the club.

Ill-disciplined watchdogs, perhaps. But the most conscientious spend a great deal of time checking courthouse sources, sitting in court, examining the work done by judges, prosecutors and defense attorneys. The work done in cases like that of Jose Santa Maria, not O.J. Simpson.

These watchdogs deal with the reality of our faceless, impersonal and clogged legal factories. Without such watchdogs, the huge Los Angeles Criminal Courts Building and courthouses around the country would churn out their product free from inspection. The factory bosses don’t like the inspectors. But I don’t think the consumers want them to ease up.