Justice Filmed Is Justice Distorted

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In the meantime, jury selection has been suspended in the Houston trial of Cedric Ryan Harrison, who allegedly shot a man to death during a carjacking.</div> <bR> <div> As a lawyer who once served as a juror in a murder trial here in Washington, I find the trial judge's decision to allow a camera in the jury room one of the most astonishing rulings in decades.</div> <bR> <div> It's safe to assume that the country's criminal courts will not be busy over the holidays wiring their jury rooms for the benefit of the television networks; the trial judge's decision is not necessarily the start of a trend. But it is disturbing nonetheless because it is the most serious challenge so far to the time-honored principle of jury confidentiality. Televising jury deliberations in cases involving violent felonies (including capital-murder trials) is a terrible idea. It could change the makeup of juries, both by dissuading some thoughtful people from serving and by attracting the kind of jurors who would say anything to get their 15 minutes of fame on "Jerry Springer." Perhaps more important, it would affect how jurors will act once they begin deliberations.</div> <bR> <div> Take the trial I sat on some years back. The defendant was charged with murder for shooting an 18-year-old woman three times at close range, and with assault with intent to kill for shooting her cousin twice. He survived to testify against the defendant, though the defense argued that the cousin had been too high on crack to identify anyone reliably. (The cousin denied using crack that night.) </div> <bR> <div> Out of fear of reprisal, we jurors were grateful that the judge preserved our anonymity throughout the trial by referring to us by juror numbers alone. Even with jury confidentiality, a defendant who is convicted knows that every juror voted against him because of the nearly universal requirement that felony verdicts be unanimous. At least we didn't have to worry about our faces being broadcast widely. Without that kind of confidentiality, jurors may fear that a negative comment about a defendant or witness could come back to haunt them, especially as their faces would be known to the world.</div> <bR> <div> Surprisingly, only 14 of the 110 potential jurors summoned for the Harrison trial told the judge during jury selection that the presence of a camera in the jury room might affect their decision-making. Even assuming that the others honestly believed that they wouldn't be affected, it's a good bet that none of the 12 jurors, plus alternates, who will be chosen have participated in a murder trial before. While these jurors may believe they wouldn't be influenced by a camera, my experience suggests that they probably have no idea what they are in for. Deciding whether to send a person to prison even for a short time is an awesome responsibility, still more so when the issue is life imprisonment or death.</div> <bR> <div> In the course of finding our defendant guilty of both first-degree murder and assault with intent to kill, more than a few tears were shed in the jury room. It was a stressful experience, and I fear that we might well have ended with a hung jury had the unblinking eye of a camera been trained on us.</div> <bR> <div> There are several ways that filming deliberations might affect how jurors reach a verdict. For instance, passing judgment on minority defendants can raise sensitive issues that could well be exacerbated in a public setting. My trial involved black victims and a black defendant. Six jury members were black; five were white; one was Asian. Overwhelming evidence convinced a middle-aged African American juror that the defendant was guilty, but she said she didn't want to send another young black man to jail. Had we been on national TV, I wonder whether the five other non-black jurors and I , for fear of appearing racially insensitive, might have thought twice before trying to persuade her that she shouldn't base her vote on sentiment.</div> <bR> <div> A similar dynamic applies to discussions among jurors of different backgrounds. The jury box may be the only place in the country where citizens of diverse races, ethnicities and economic backgrounds come to work together as equals, notwithstanding potentially great disparities in education. My jury of six men and six women included a cook, a paralegal, a government worker, a federal law enforcement officer and a physician. During more than a week and a half of testimony, my fellow jurors and I developed a rapport that allowed us to speak fairly openly with each other. I doubt that this could have happened if we had known we were all going to be on television. Moreover, the knowledge that a TV editor could take an inoffensive exchange or comment out of context would have affected my behavior. And when you need a unanimous verdict from 12 people, affecting even one juror's conduct can change the outcome of a trial.</div> <div> Videotaping jury deliberations in cases involving violent felonies also would provide creative defense lawyers with all sorts of extraneous grist for their appellate mills. The Texas defendant who agreed to let "Frontline" film his jury's deliberations agreed not to use the videotape on appeal (though he didn't expressly waive his right to challenge any jury misconduct), but good luck to the prosecutor trying to hold him to that if the jury finds him guilty. And if the defendant does appeal, he could retain a new attorney who would surely argue that his or her client had been the victim of ineffective assistance of counsel in letting him sign such a waiver.</div> <bR> <div> From my own experience as a juror, I can imagine the defense counsel arguing on appeal that the rest of the jury exercised undue influence when we persuaded the sentimental holdout juror to follow her head in deciding how to vote, or trying to make much of our forewoman's speculating at one point about why the defendant's wife never attended his trial. (We all agreed that this was a fact we couldn't consider.) Given the cleverness of attorneys, even a joke -- such as the way one of my fellow jurors referred to the defendant's folksy lawyer as "Matlock" -- could provide an excuse for frivolous appeals. Jurors are not blow-dried, scripted TV personalities. But if they are put on TV, could they eventually be held to the same standards as Ted Koppel?</div> <bR> <div> Finally, while there are many specific reasons to maintain jury confidentiality, there is no compelling reason to film jury deliberations.</div> <bR> <div> At its best, the jury system gathers citizens together so they can bring their collective wisdom to bear on serious questions of guilt and innocence. Juries provide an important check on the power of government and lend moral authority to the verdicts rendered by our judicial system. We should think twice before doing anything that would weaken them, which abandoning the long-standing practice of jury confidentiality surely would do.</div> <bR> <div> <I>Martin Kimel, a Washington lawyer, writes on legal and other topics.</I></div> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> © 2002 The Washington Post Company </div> <bR> <div> <B>Click </B><A HREF="id38.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Sex, Drugs Murder Inside a D.C. Homici"><U><B>here </B></U></A><B>to read the inside story of the murder trial that was the basis for this piece.</B></div> <div> <IMG SRC="067140f0.png" border=0 width="20" height="15" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"><IMG SRC="067140f0.png" border=0 width="20" height="15" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></div> <bR> <div>   <script type="text/javascript" language="JavaScript">var site="sm4sitemeter"</script> <script type="text/javascript" language="JavaScript1.2" src="http://sm4.sitemeter.com/js/counter.js?site=sm4sitemeter"> </script> <noscript> <a href="http://sm4.sitemeter.com/stats.asp?site=sm4sitemeter" target="_top"> <img src="http://sm4.sitemeter.com/meter.asp?site=sm4sitemeter" alt="Site Meter" border=0></a> </noscript>    </div> </td> </tr></table></body>