75 Years of The Florida Bar — revisiting the great courtroom camera debate

In 1963, Florida lawyers sharply disagreed over whether cameras would educate the public — or 'prostitute our courts"

As The Florida Bar marks its 75th year, the News is revisiting moments that helped shape Florida's legal profession and the administration of justice.

Few issues generated as much debate in the mid-20th century as whether cameras, microphones, and other electronic media should be allowed in courtrooms.

Today, cameras in Florida courtrooms are commonplace, the result of a landmark 1979 Florida Supreme Court decision that made the state a national leader in judicial transparency. But the path to that decision was anything but certain.

For decades, the profession wrestled with competing values: the public's right to know and the press's role in informing citizens on one hand, and the right to a fair trial and the need to preserve the dignity and integrity of judicial proceedings on the other.

The debate centered on Canon 35 of the ABA's Canons of Judicial Ethics, adopted in 1937 in the aftermath of several highly publicized criminal trials. It prohibited courtroom photography and the broadcasting of judicial proceedings. By the early 1960s, however, advances in technology and growing public interest in transparency had prompted calls for reconsideration.

The Florida Bar devoted much of its January 1963 Journal to a discussion of Canon 35. Then-President Reginald L. Williams described the question as one that touched both "freedom of speech and press" and the guarantee of a fair trial. He noted the ABA was actively studying possible revisions and seeking guidance from state and local bars.

"The Florida Bar and the courts of our state have in the past been in the forefront in protecting the constitutional guarantees involved in this issue of freedom of speech and press and of fair trial," Williams wrote.

What followed was a collection of 16 essays reflecting differing views. Some argued that television could educate the public, enhance confidence in government, and bring courtroom proceedings to citizens unable to attend in person. Others warned that cameras would invite sensationalism, distract participants, and erode the dignity of the judicial process.

The excerpts that follow illustrate the competing arguments being advanced in Florida more than six decades ago.

Broader Understanding of Court's Function

Mallory E. Home, speaker of the Florida House of Representatives, has served in the Legislature since 1954. He was a member of the Constitutional Advisory Commission, the Legislative Interim Committee and the Conference Committee on a New Constitution, and in 1957-59 he and other members of the Leon County Delegation were named the most effective delegation of the term. A law graduate of the University of Florida, Home practices law in Tallahassee. He was president of the Junior Bar Section of The Florida Bar in 1953-54.

My position in the legal profession and respect for the decorum of its public court trials would prompt me never to advocate a change which would, in any way, diminish from the importance or welfare of either court or profession.

Personally, as an attorney, I cannot fear the effect of televising or photographing a trial. We’ve long been committed to the accepted proposition that trials are public in nature. In my opinion, TV today is a part of that exposure.

The mechanics of television and other machinery of the visual media are an important facility in the process of making the public more a part of the proceedings than ever before in our judicial history. By the same token, the development of new techniques which make it possible to televise such events without use of bright lights and mechanical refinements that ensure quieter running cameras cause me to know that decorum and integrity would in no way deteriorate as a result of the presence of such equipment.

For the most part, I view these television productions as broadly educational. It has been my experience that the more the public is aware of the manner in which all phases of our government functions, the greater is its respect for, and pride in, government generally. Further, it is this same experience that calms any fear that broadening of the rule would depreciate in the eyes of the public the integrity of our courts.

Viewed in a different light, the basic question lies, perhaps, in our own restrictions in the definition of the word “public.” Webster defines the word, in part, as something which is “open to the knowledge or view of all; generally seen, known or heard.” Presently, our policies connote certain specific and implied restrictions in the legal definition of the word “public,” including as we do, only those able or willing to personally attend the court session. In this day of modern communications, I believe we have a vehicle which enables us to realize the full meaning; an avenue through which we can open our courts “to the knowledge or view of ALL.”

I am not naive enough to believe that the unregulated expansion of this canon would not bring forth some isolated violations of proper decorum. And in the interest of the pursuit of justice inherent in all trials, the presence of cameras and operators should be affected as unobtrusively as possible. But we should raise no more question about the orderly participation of this media, than we do about the reporter at the counsel table with his voluminous notes.

In cases such as those involving welfare of the minor, we should continue to have certain trials closed to the public. Outside these exceptions, I would strongly recommend that authority be vested in the trial judge to regulate the mechanics involved in transmission of a trial to the public by all media.

Under the jurist’s supervision, and with cooperation of the broadcast media, decorum would be preserved and the dignity of the court enhanced through broader understanding of its functions in a democratic structure. The intelligent expansion of Canon 35 toward achievement of this end, can do no more, no less, than bring a true meaning of the administration of justice closer to the people.

We Must Not Prostitute Our Courts

Jack F. Wayman is in the private practice of law in Jacksonville where he is a member of the Jacksonville Bar Association, the American Bar Association, The Florida Bar, National Association of Claimants' Council of America, Academy of Florida Trial Lawyers, Law-Science Academy of America, Fellow, American College of Trial Lawyers, and the American Judicature Society. He received his education at the University of Kansas.

The true nucleus of democracy lies in our courts and in the dignity, impartiality and integrity of their administration. It is unthinkable that the doors of our courtrooms should be opened to the oftentimes distorted sensationalism and commercialism of the press photographer or the radio or television broadcaster.

The trial of a case is not an occasion for histrionics from the bench, from the bar, from the witness stand or from the jury box. The processes of a court are simple, direct and understandable. Its rules, though maligned by the ignorant, are based upon truths learned through many decades of experience. In this day of editorialized journalism the American people would suffer indeed by the exposure of the business of their courtrooms to the jaundiced eye of a camera looking for the undignified posture, the snarl of anger or perhaps some manifestation of nervousness of a participant in a trial.

Every trial is composed of witnesses sworn to the truth. Each relates the truth as his eyes and ears transmit it to his brain. Minor inconsistencies are understandably the rule rather than the exception. From the whole of the trial emerges the truth. The court and the jury must listen attentively to and absorb all of the evidence as it comes before them. Their function is not one of extroversion. Their presence is neither necessarily photogenic nor dramatic. Nor should their decisions be rendered to conform with the opinions of members of the public to whom the press may have fed only selected segments of the testimony. The bench, the jury, the witnesses and the bar should not function for public entertainment nor should they avoid their respective duties for fear of criticism from the misinformed or the malinformed.

Canon 35 of the Canons of Judicial Ethics must not be modified. There is much to be lost and nothing to be gained by any compromise of our present position.