THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, January 27, 1996 TAG: 9601270276
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B2 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: FROM WIRE REPORTS
DATELINE: BOSTON LENGTH: Medium: 55 lines
Television stations will ask a Supreme Judicial Court justice to overturn a ban on television cameras from the courtroom during next month's murder trial of John C. Salvi III, attorneys for the stations said Friday.
Norfolk (Mass.) Superior Court Judge Barbara Dortch-Okara banned the cameras Thursday, saying she feared witnesses could be subjected to violence by abortion foes and that Salvi may seize a chance to disrupt the trial.
The judge also concluded television coverage could destroy the impartiality of jurors, exposed to what she called ``second guessing'' by television commentators.
Salvi is accused of storming into two women's health clinics in Brookline, Mass., Dec. 30, 1994. He was captured the next day in Norfolk, Va., and was charged with the shooting at the Hillcrest Clinic. No one was hurt in that incident.
In the Brookline shootings, receptionists Shannon Lowney and Lee Ann Nichols were killed.
On Thursday, Dortch-Okara rejected arguments by lawyers for Court-TV and Boston TV stations that they be allowed to cover the trial of the accused women's clinic gunman in its entirety.
District Attorney William D. Delahunt praised the decision. ``It's a recognition that this is a case with exceptional circumstances,'' he said. ``It is not a total bar, and it doesn't represent a trend.''
There is no plan to sequester jurors during the trial. While Dortch-Okara will instruct the jury not to read newspapers or watch television when they leave the courthouse, she said saturation coverage would make it more difficult for jurors to avoid hearing about the case.
Dortch-Okara rejected a request by prosecutors to also bar the taking of still photographs during the trial. Although Prosecutor John Kivlan included that request in his motion to bar live television from the courtroom, he did not press the point during arguments in December.
Lawyers for Salvi joined in the prosecution's bid to bar television coverage.
In arguments that reflected national disgust with the saturation coverage of the O.J. Simpson murder trial in Los Angeles, defense attorney J.W. Carney Jr. said the presence of cameras would cheapen the serious issues to be decided and endanger Salvi's right to a fair trial. MEMO: This story was compiled from reports by The Patriot Ledger News Service
and the Boston Globe.
KEYWORDS: CAMERA IN THE COURTROOM ABORTION TRIAL SHOOTING
by CNB