Media attention in high profile cases virtually ensures that at least some of the eventual jurors will not be impartial, despite a trial judge's typical admonition to jurors to ignore information outside the courtroom. As the famous dictum goes, you cannot un-ring a bell.
Inevitably and unfairly, a great deal of the information jurors learn about outside the courtroom will be false, or at the very least, it will be evidence that the judge deems inadmissible at trial.
Chief Justice Warren Burger wrote the Supreme Court opinion in a 1976 case which struck a balance between the rights of the accused to a fair trial and the First Amendment rights of the news media.
Mr. Burger wrote that our nation's founders "recognized that there were risks to an individual's rights from an unfettered press." Citing an earlier case he wrote: "The trial courts must take strong measures to ensure that the balance is never weighed against the accused."
Today the media charges in before the balancing scales are even brought out.
Comments like the ones referred to in the Le and Halderman cases can be construed as clearly prejudicial ante litem, without necessarily advancing either the public' s right to know or the public's right to receive accurate and timely information. Decisions to publish reputational information about parties to a case (especially without revealing sources) would seem to suggest that competition is what often drives publication decisions.
Hoyt wrote that The Times assigned nine reporters to cover the Le case. Granted, the case was in The Times' backyard, less than two hours away in New Haven, Connecticut, but that didn't justify the strike force journalism tactics. When newspapers overhype stories, distortions inevitably result.
It is unwise to gag media when it comes to reporting stories that will end up in the courts. I am certainly not advocating that we return to the days of the secret trial Star Chamber. However, we need to strike a balance so that our system doesn't dissolve into a media-propelled public witch hunt either. The public has a right to expect that courts will operate in an impartial atmosphere relatively free from citizens' passions fired by a sensation-hungry media.
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