Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, February 14, 1992 TAG: 9202140327
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MONICA DAVEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BEDFORD LENGTH: Medium
BEDFORD AWAITS SHIFT IN TV FOCUS
Supporters of a bill to allow cameras in courtrooms across Virginia say it would give the public a better understanding of the legal system.Some folks in Bedford County are equally excited about the bill's success in the General Assembly so far - but for a different reason.
As home of the the only Southwest Virginia courtroom in which television coverage has been allowed, Bedford County has been portrayed as a place where weird, grotesque murders happen, Bedford boosters say.
If cameras were allowed in every court, they predict, Bedford no longer could be made out to be "the Murder Capital of Virginia," as one local lawyer recently put it.
"It definitely will put us in a more positive light," said Barbara Ring, executive director of the Bedford Area Chamber of Commerce.
"It would take attention away from crime in Bedford and have it more evenly distributed to the other areas. It would be a positive change for Bedford."
Bedford County Administrator William Rolfe agrees.
"Being the only one in this area, it seemed like television was like a pack of piranhas attacking us."
Five years ago, the General Assembly decided to allow cameras in six courtrooms - including circuit courtrooms in Bedford, Henrico County and Virginia Beach - as part of an experiment on the effects of television coverage.
Although the other localities might have seemed likely to have more crime, television stations filmed Bedford County trials more than any others during the test period.
"It presented a negative image of Bedford County," Rolfe said. All the attention gave people the unjust perception that the county had a tendency toward "horrible crimes," he said.
"I don't want to say that Bedford shies away from having court cases on television," Rolfe said. "It just created a disparity in perception to the public. It looked like we were worse that other jurisdictions."
The bill to allow cameras statewide passed the state Senate overwhelmingly Tuesday, despite a recent study from the Virginia Supreme Court in which the justices concluded that cameras generally have a negative impact.
The House of Delegates Courts of Justice Committee approved the bill Thursday, and the full House is expected to vote next week.
But don't expect to stop seeing Bedford trials on television. It wasn't just the camera access that brought news reporters there.
Bedford's murder trials would have drawn heavy media coverage no matter what, according to WDBJ-Channel 7's Jim Shaver.
"There have been so many unusual cases over there," said Shaver, vice president of news and programming. "We would have been there anyway."
First there was the trial of a defendant who hired a hit man to shoot an 18-year-old in the back during a hunting trip for insurance money in 1983.
Two years later, Elizabeth Haysom and Jens Soering plotted and carried out the murders of Haysom's parents and then fled to Europe.
Then in 1987, a man was convicted of beating to death a Roanoke prostitute, carrying her body several miles on the hood of a car and dumping it into a creek in Bedford County.
There were others, too.
A man who lived in a stone hut and slept in a coffin was killed; a teen-age girl shot and killed her mother; a New York man murdered his homosexual lover; two 14-year-old boys in search of loaves of bread murdered a 79-year-old man they had never met.
Tuesday, Bedford's latest murder trial ended. Kenneth Stewart was sentenced to die in the electric chair for murdering his wife and their 5-month-old son on Mother's Day.
The end of the latest unusual Bedford murder trial coincided with the impending proliferation of courtroom cameras. But there's an even stranger coincidence: For the first time since 1985 - when the Haysom charges were filed - there are no murder suspects awaiting trial in Bedford County.