Cameras In The Courtroom?

Notamerican · 11-18-2009, 01:27 PM

Should cameras be placed in courtrooms so that criminal trials can be televised?

Invasion of privacy? What if the person turns out to be innocent? Your thoughts? Discuss.

Esmo · 11-18-2009, 11:06 PM

I don't think it's good to televise criminal trials so that Joe Public can presume to have an opinion of the proceedings.

alfaspider06 · 11-19-2009, 01:51 AM

Usually cameras aren't allowed in the courtroom except on certain cases. Generally murder trials and "violent" crimes do not allow cameras in the courtroom, but "not violent" crimes, like insider trading and crimes like that sometimes allow cameras. But I don't think it is really an invasion of privacy, the whole concept of a trial is that you are judged my a jury of your peers, and by televising certain parts of a trial more people (peers) can get form an idea on the case, but since they are not actual members of the jury they have no say in the verdict. That being said it doesn't really effect the outcome of a case, so I don't see a huge problem with it.

Esmo · 11-19-2009, 04:40 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by alfaspider06

Usually cameras aren't allowed in the courtroom except on certain cases. Generally murder trials and "violent" crimes do not allow cameras in the courtroom, but "not violent" crimes, like insider trading and crimes like that sometimes allow cameras. But I don't think it is really an invasion of privacy, the whole concept of a trial is that you are judged my a jury of your peers, and by televising certain parts of a trial more people (peers) can get form an idea on the case, but since they are not actual members of the jury they have no say in the verdict. That being said it doesn't really effect the outcome of a case, so I don't see a huge problem with it.

If you were a defendant, would you want everybody watching your trial and speculating as to your innocence in a public forum? Of course, this all already technically possible, but the medium of television makes it much more accessible to everybody, thereby risking an increase in the power held by public pressure, thereby risking populist forcings of the jury's hand.

At any rate, if I was being tried, I don't want people gawking at my own private business, thank you very much. It's too illiberal a suggestion to be justifiable.

alfaspider06 · 11-19-2009, 08:14 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Esmo

If you were a defendant, would you want everybody watching your trial and speculating as to your innocence in a public forum?

It depends on the case, say if I got a traffic ticket, the speculation of innocence is different than if I was being tried for murder. And that is the point of a trial to prove one's guilt or innocence. So even if it is not televised everyone in the courtroom is already speculating.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Esmo

Of course, this all already technically possible, but the medium of television makes it much more accessible to everybody, thereby risking an increase in the power held by public pressure, thereby risking populist forcings of the jury's hand.

Again it depends on the case, if the case is high profile enough to be "televised" or at least partly so most juries would be sequestered so that couldn't happen. That even happens on cases that aren't televised. The court system has been around long enough to know that people are easily persuaded so in order to overcome that they just limit contact until the trial is over.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Esmo

At any rate, if I was being tried, I don't want people gawking at my own private business, thank you very much. It's too illiberal a suggestion to be justifiable.

Well if you are being tried, everybody in the court house is gawking at your "private" business (if you committed a crime and are on trial, you really don't have any private business anymore...but that is a different topic altogether), so what is the difference of having a camera crew there?