English juries are warned to reach their decision exclusively on the evidence put before them. Would the proposed intrusion of TV into the courtroom (as in the USA) threaten this restriction by turning the trial into a public performance? The ancient Athenian case may be salutary.
In Athens, all cases were privately brought, before a jury of (usually) 501 citizen males over 30 (no judge). Litigants pleaded their cases themselves (no barristers). Both parties spoke once, for equal periods. The evidence of witnesses was read out (no cross-questioning), and the jurors then passed their verdict (no discussion). And it all took one day. But while it is clear that the facts of the case in hand were of some importance, they were not the whole story. Both defence and prosecution spent a great deal of their time expatiating on other issues because there were no rules of evidence, let alone reporting restrictions.
The point is that Athens was a real democracy, and since the courts were open to the public, the whole event was a public show. Both sides slugged it out to catch the mood of the watching public as much as the jury, saying what they liked about their opponent, whether relevant to the charge or not, if they thought it would help.
Further, since cases were brought by private persons, not the state, the courts were used as arenas in which to air personal, frequently political, grievances, sometimes on the thinnest of grounds. Revenge was a common motive and, given how freely litigants mentioned it, clearly nothing of which to be ashamed. In other words, the atmosphere was one in which the charge could easily disappear in a fog of political, social and every other sort of axe-grinding. The result was that the jury often seemed to be being invited to ask not ‘Is X guilty?’ but ‘Now that X is here, what shall we Athenians do about him, innocent or guilty?’
That’s real democracy for you: the people were the masters, not the laws or the judge. With some outstanding (European) exceptions, we generally prefer the legal system our way, however undemocratic it actually is. Would TV subtly change all that?
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