...what goes on in a courtroom, and how few will ever try to understand, maybe "transparency" is not the solution to all problems.The solution is more transparency, not less, your honor. https://t.co/7TlzmxTu0y
— Wendy Benjaminson (@wbenjaminson) November 17, 2021
Besides, it's not like the judge is threatening to hold secret trials and close all proceedings to public scrutiny. It's still a public trial, you can still enter the courtroom and observe, the trial records will still be publicly available.
Television cameras are not neutral windows. What is reported, via news or Twitter or YouTube or cable news, is not objective and dispassionate. A judge is entitled to run his courtroom as he sees fit, consistent with his/her legal, ethical, and professional responsibilities. Leaving cameras out can exclude a distorting lens, not a "transparent" one.
I'm not defending his behavior so much as pointing out that if it weren't on video, nobody would be talking about it. We have, as I've said, a bias for the visual; especially the audio-visual."A black, the black, the only black" -- what is wrong with this man pic.twitter.com/oEr4naGS5Z
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) November 17, 2021
And this is more outrageous than the entire Rittenhouse trial. But who cares, right?
Just go to Bad Legal Twitter and read how many people think the prosecution can get a new trial if Rittenhouse is acquitted; and tell me again that “transparency” is “the solution.” Education is a solution; transparency just coddles ignorance. If you don’t know what you’re looking at, it doesn’t do much good to see it.Judge in high-profile case compliments defendant for giving up his right to trial so he could avoid 16+ years in prison.
— Carissa Byrne Hessick (@CBHessick) November 17, 2021
Our system is designed to deprive criminal defendants of their constitutional rights.
The "smart" defendants know this.#PunishmentWithoutTrial https://t.co/9DD31ZL6N1
I'd have thought people would have learned the downside of TV trials during the OJ spectacular when Ito kept finding new ways to drag things out and drive the country out of its mind. The right of the public is to get justice when someone has done something wrong, not to watch trials on the rage machine. I'd feel better about it if press coverage of the courts was total and complete access to all of the proceedings but only after a verdict has been given. I don't trust the media even more than I don't trust judges or lawyers or juries. I certainly don't trust the social disease media.
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