Indiana Supreme Court Approves Pilot Program to Allow Electronic Recording in Trial Courts
July 10, 2006
George D. Gabel- Jacksonville
Corinne R. Simon*
The Indiana Supreme Court approved an 18-month experiment allowing television and radio equipment in eight trial courtrooms across the state. Indiana’s appellate courts, including the Indiana Supreme Court, already allow audio and video recording.
The court’s decision, announced last month, was in response to a request by the Indiana Broadcasters Association and the Hoosier State Press Association. The program will allow one video camera, one still camera and up to three tape recorders in the courtrooms of the eight judges participating in the experiment.
According to the state supreme court order, all parties and the trial judge must give consent before cameras are granted access. Additional restrictions on coverage, similar to restrictions in other states that already allow electronic coverage of court proceedings, are also included, such as a ban on the recording of police informants, undercover agents, jurors and witnesses.
Currently, 19 states give the presiding judge broad discretion in allowing the recording of court proceedings; 15 states restrict coverage of important types of cases or of all or large categories of witnesses who object to the coverage of their testimony; and 16 states allow appellate coverage only or have such restricting trial coverage rules that coverage is essentially prevented.
Justice Brent Dickson, one of two Indiana Supreme Court justices opposing the pilot program, voiced concerns that the presence of cameras would negatively affect witnesses and jurors and would “cause attorneys to be more theatrical in their presentations” as the electronic media “divert attention to the so-called ‘court of public opinion’” and “increase the sensationalism of already sensational stories, rather than educate people about the judicial process.”
Similar concerns have kept cameras out of all but two federal courts. About 15 years ago, the United States Judicial Conference, the primary policy-making body for the federal court system, approved a three-year pilot program that allowed electronic media coverage of civil proceedings in six federal district courts and two federal courts of appeals. The Federal Judicial Center later evaluated the pilot program and ultimately recommended that the Judicial Conference allow cameras into federal appellate and district courts.
However, the Judicial Conference voted to end the pilot program after it expired in 1994, most likely in response to the highly-publicized O.J. Simpson trial. Since then, the only two federal appellate courts to allow cameras into their courtrooms, the Second and Ninth Circuits, are the two that participated in the federal pilot program.
Congressional bills seeking to open the federal courts have been introduced for a number of years, but none have survived. Advocates press on nevertheless. The Senate Judiciary Committee recently passed S. 1768, which would allow television coverage of open sessions of the U.S. Supreme Court unless a majority of the Court found the due process rights of at least one party would be violated.
The Senate committee also passed S. 829, the Sunshine in the Courtroom Act of 2005, which would give federal appellate and trial court judges discretionary power to give courtroom access to cameras and tape recorders. Similar bills are currently before the House Subcommittee on Courts, Internet and Intellectual Property.
For more information, e-mail George Gabel at george.gabel@hklaw.com or call toll free, 1-888-688-8500.
* Corinne R. Simon, 2006 summer associate in the Jacksonville office of Holland & Knight, is attending University of Florida Levin College of Law and will be graduating in 2007.