Are Federal Cases Headed For Television?   

An advisory panel takes a step toward allowing cameras at U.S. criminal trials.

The technology of the broadcast news industry is changing at a dizzying rate. But the federal courts continue to move into the television age at a crawl. A small advance took place recently with the first official support for easing the ban on airing federal criminal trials.

By early 1996, the first televised federal criminal trial could occur. But even that may be only an experiment. Lawyers for the broadcast press, repeatedly frustrated in efforts to get cameras into the U.S. courts, no longer seek bold gestures; they are content to solicit incremental change.

Americans may have become a visual people, but all they see of federal criminal cases are artists' sketches, sometimes good likenesses but with none of the drama and sound of the real thing.

By contrast, the nation has long watched state criminal trials, including recent high-profile legal battles involving Rodney King, the Bobbitts and William Kennedy Smith. Junkies now have Court TV to provide them all the coverage they can handle. Thirty-nine states allow cameras in the courtroom.

But celebrated federal cases over the years – Watergate, Iran-contra, the World Trade Center bombing – have been blacked out.

Since July 1991, federal courts have conducted an experiment with cameras in federal civil trials. An interim report last November by the Federal Judicial Center (the research arm of the federal courts) indicated the test had worked well. Among the center's conclusions: Judges and lawyers generally found television had no effect on the behavior of the participants; judges viewed the cameras more favorably after presiding over televised trials; and the news media did not break the rules.

The test, due to run through the end of the year, was confined to civil cases because of the long-standing federal rule that "the taking of photographs" during criminal proceedings "shall not be permitted by the court."

It's not easy to modify such regulations. Changes must be approved by a judicial rules committee, the U.S. Judicial Conference (the policy making arm of the U.S. judiciary), the U.S. Supreme Court and Congress.

The process has begun. On April 18, the Advisory Committee on Criminal Rules (a panel of the Judicial Conference) endorsed a suggestion by a coalition of broadcasters and publishers that the Judicial Conference be empowered to write guidelines allowing and regulating televised criminal trials.

Timothy B. Dyk, a Washington lawyer for the media, had urged the Advisory Committee to take that modest step.

Dyk and his clients are fully satisfied that broadcasting will do no harm in criminal courts. But he obviously thought it was more politic to go for a test rather than a repeal of the ban. That would let the judges move cautiously. The result, of course, would be less coverage, but maybe it would improve the chances for repeal down the road.

It has been 13 years since the Supreme Court ruled that televising trials did not violate a suspect's constitutional rights. While that has encouraged states to let cameras and tape recorders in, it has had far less impact on the federal judiciary. The judges had to be convinced that TV would not ruin their system. The three-year test in civil cases apparently has made many converts.

As the move toward a criminal test advances, the broadcast press and its lawyers will watch warily for signals from the Supreme Court. The justices' hostility toward having cameras in their own chamber is well known; it's hard to predict how they will react when the issue of televising federal criminal trials reaches them.

It is possible, of course, that the justices might approve broadcasting criminal trials without embracing the idea for their own proceedings. The high court is not generally bound by rules that regulate the lower-ranking judiciary; it could very well remain a holdout.

Broadcasters have shown great interest in opening up the Supreme Court to cameras and tape recorders, but it's likely that many of its hearings would be ignored by the electronic press. Of the roughly 100 cases decided each term, perhaps a dozen would attract much of an audience.

But broadcasters always are more interested in trials than cases on appeal; appeals, after all, only have lawyers and judges talking to each other. Criminal trials have human conflict, and they take startling turns. Many are crowd-pleasers.

And with Congress working feverishly to create batches of new federal crimes, much more of America's criminal court activity might be shifted to the U.S. courthouses.

But if these proceedings remain off-limits to the electronic media, Congress' grand experiment in federalizing crime may not get the intense scrutiny it requires. l