CAMILLE KIMBALL: Confessions of a Slightly Famous Crime Writer
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I Love to Say I Told You So (Casey Anthony case)
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The post below is about the Casey Anthony case (young mother charged with murder of 2 year old) and how the judge in the case is trying to arm wrestle the media into submission.
As I predicted, the judge's actions have backfired. Some media are challenging him in court. Others, like hometown newspaper Orlando Sentinel, are picking up the gauntlet and flinging it back in his face, with a rapier edge slicing through the air as it flies. The Sentinel pointedly states that it will not sign the Austin Powers Super-decoder Secrecy Oath and therefore has no reason to join the appeal. They do, confidently and gleefully, mention they will pursue getting the information from other sources.
Let's see....there will be secretaries, janitors, clerks and, oh dear, lawyers involved in the information he's trying to keep hidden (he's trying to save himself a whole 12 hours????)....you think the Sentinel (and any number of other news outlets) will be able to suss out a weak link in the system?
Poor Judge Perry is turning this information into a prized plum that it doesn't merit being on its own. Jury selection is the most boring part of a trial, hands down. But he sprayed it with the glitter known as Authority Trampling on a Free Press and then taunted the tigers with it.
Tsk, tsk, tsk.
He should have just sealed the entire thing to all parties, without trying to entice in producers and editors with Such a Special Offer! like a used car salesman. If sealing the location was not an option available to him, he should just have sucked it up and dealt with the glorious free country he lives in. Would someone like InSession have done man-on-the-street interviews in that county? Possibly. But there are any number of remedies to discarding tainted and otherwise unacceptable potential jurors from the pool. That's what the questionnaires and voir dire are for.
Pssssst, let me lean in to whisper, your honor: lots of newspapers etc. would have found that story not worthy of resources. Plenty of them would have let the story die down for the few weeks it will take for jury selection and wait for opening arguments to rev up coverage again.
Alas, that blissful quiet time may be lost forever now, after the Double-Dawg Dare the media received from the bench.
The people who manipulate the media best are those who understand it. Judge Perry clearly doesn't understand reporters. Too bad he doesn't understand his First Amendment a little better, either.
Camille Kimball's books are:
What She Always Wanted
A Sudden Shot
The Mammoth Book of Tough Guys
Posted by CamilleKimball at 12:57 PM 0 comments
Labels: Casey Anthony, Caylee Anthony, freedom of the press, managing the press
Your Honor, I Object!
Anyone interested in the Casey Anthony case (young Florida mother accused of killing her 2 year old, Caylee), and most true crimers can't avoid following the case at least to some degree, will know that Judge Belvin Perry has been offering up his thoughts the last few days about "the media."
In solemn tones that barely conceal the steam coming out of his ears, Judge Perry tells us never in his thirty years has he seen such media coverage in a court case, it has certainly never happened in the State of Florida and it even "dwarfs" the O.J. Simpson trial. He goes on to say the media has "changed" and scolds the reporters and producers following Casey Anthony for their pursuit of "ratings" and other sins that seem more terrible than, well, murdering a bubbly little girl, stuffing her in a bag and tossing her into the neighborhood woods.
No one has more respect for the judiciary than do I, but this time, Judge Perry is showing his slip. Did he not notice a charming little Florida sideshow known as the Anna Nicole Smith case? That one had so much media interest the judge himself landed a reality TV show deal. Oh, gee, before that, we had an itty bitty custody dispute in Florida about a kindergartener named Elian. Seems to me a few reporters and cameras showed up for that one. Oh, who was that guy? (said in the voice of David Spade at his most sarcastic) He was known for being handsome? Oh, yeah. Ted was the guy's name. Ted Bundy. Seems he brought a bit of media attention to Florida.
That's just off the top of my head, but three cases should suffice to outshout Judge Perry's assertion about Florida cases so I'll move on.
It's nice that Judge Perry remembers O.J. Simpson, but did Scott Petersen slip his mind? Hollywood types like Robert Blake, Phil Spectre and Michael Jackson? Professional athletes Kobe Bryant, Michael Vick and Mike Tyson? College athletes from the Duke LaCrosse team? I'm getting tired of all these cases from Judge Perry's own lifetime (adult life, at that) that keep popping into my head. I'm going to move on again.
The judge says the media has "changed" and apparently, lost some sort of moral restraint he believes it once had that conformed with his own idea of how reporters should behave.
Hmmmm.....in the 1930s, the case of "trunk murderess" Winnie Ruth Judd created a vortex of media melodrama, using cutthroat and under the table tactics that would make most of today's reporters blush.
(archive newspaper above from 1931)
And then there's the Lindbergh baby, Lizzie Borden, Cinque,* and on and on and on through this nation's history and far back into Europe's history as well.
Judge Perry, you see, named his own blindspot when he kept saying never in "my" court, "my" career, and "my" experience. He finds the media attention alarming because he, personally, has never been closely involved with it. He erroneously concludes neither has anyone else.
But if you are a professional reporter, instead of a professional jurist, your perspective is vastly different. You know this kind of media attention happens constantly. You know the world not only continues to spin on its axis, it thrives on the fresh air. It's actually one of the things that makes this country special. We don't have star chambers here, we have a free press. And, thank heaven, we have a citizenry that is interested in the judicial system and engaged in the public dialogue. Your honor, media interest--and, by proxy, that of their readers/viewers/listeners--is a sign of good things, not bad.
The fact that Casey Anthony deserves due process is not in conflict with this. It is the court's job to give her due process, not some just out of college producer's at InSession TV. In order to put this burden on all the interns, producers, beat reporters and columnists covering the trial, Judge Perry has crafted a fancy little magic trick involving special conditions and blackmail. When the smoke clears from this sleight of hand, gosh, the trained dove fluttering away looks a lot like "prior restraint" and other unsavory things we usually feel are assaults on the U.S. constitution. I have a hard time understanding how protecting Casey Anthony's rights needs to be done at the expense of those of the the press. The Bill of Rights makes it clear, and wisely so, that kings and dukes and parliaments are not to stop American citizens from finding out what's going in the world and that the press is the agent of the free flow of information.
The judge is concerned about the jury pool for Casey Anthony's trial. That's as it should be. Here's a little secret, your honor, most of the press would be relieved if it were taken out of their hands. The jury isn't the story, Casey and Caylee are. If some want to put endless resources into pursuing the info, that's their problem. The stories will be limp and self-limiting. You'll get your "unsaturated" jury.
Simply seal the location of the jury selection. Apply the seal to all parties. Don't give special cutesy passes to those who agree to sign special made-in-the-treehouse-pinkie-swear-cross-my-heart documents.
But it's too late for that. You've thrown down the gauntlet. Now you've got newsroom lawyers clustered in New York and Atlanta weighing the pros and cons of signing the pirate's oath and fighting it in court later. Chances are good they'd win.
But, for heaven's sake, Judge Perry, at least stop thinking of Casey Anthony as so special. On the other coast, ask Lindsay Lohan's judge how many reporters are interested in that case. Look up the cases I've cited here, then remind yourself of dozens and dozens more. No, Casey is not special. The right of due process afforded to defendants in this country, however, is. But, your honor, please don't forget that so is our free press.
*For a quick look at Cinque and how he became a media darling in pre-Civil War America, take a look at Chapter 12 of my book, A SUDDEN SHOT: THE PHOENIX SERIAL SHOOTER.
Posted by CamilleKimball at 11:49 AM 0 comments
Labels: Belvin Perry, Casey Anthony, Caylee Anthony, free press, Winnie Ruth Judd
About Camille Kimball
CamilleKimball
Emmy winning Investigative Reporter. Author of non-fiction books. Appears in several national television shows and one international documentary on crime. Follow Camille on Twitter. @CamilleKimball
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