US judiciary to weigh broadcasting trials for crime victims

By Nate Raymond BOSTON, Oct 14 (Reuters) — A US judicial rulemaking panel is considering whether to create a narrow exception to the longstanding ban on TV and audio broadcasts of federal criminal trials to allow victims to watch the proceedings remotely. The proposal was discussed during a meeting in Boston of the US Judicial Conference's Advisory Committee on Criminal Rules, which only two years ago voted against a request by media organizations to more broadly lift the ban against broadcasting federal criminal proceedings. Most state courts already allow televised trials.

Following the COVID-19 pandemic, federal courts have permitted remote audio access to proceedings in civil and bankruptcy cases when testimony is not being taken. But the federal judiciary had held firm on the broadcasting ban in criminal cases, which dates back to 1946. Judges in 2024 cited concerns about how to protect the privacy of witnesses and jurors in deciding to maintain the bar on cameras.

Recently, though, Senior US District Judge Michael Mosman of Oregon, the committee's chair, appointed Debevoise & Plimpton partner Mary Jo White, the former chair of the US Securities and Exchange Commission, to head a subcommittee that would consider a narrow lifting of the ban. Chicago-based US District Judge Edmond Chang last year suggested amending the rule to permit victims and third-party custodians at bail hearings to watch criminal case proceedings remotely.

Chang did so after finding that he was barred in one narcotics-related case from allowing the mother of a victim who died of an overdose to listen to a sentencing hearing via a closed-circuit feed from Arizona, where she lived, even though both the prosecution and defense supported giving her that option. Congress has twice allowed such closed-circuit televising of criminal proceedings for victims' benefit, starting with the 9/11 Victims Access Act of 2002, which allowed them to watch the case against Zacarias Moussaoui, the only person ever convicted in a US court in connection with al Qaeda's September 11, 2001 attacks.

Congress later passed the Lockerbie Victims Access Act, which was enacted in 2024 and allows victims and family members to watch from afar the criminal trial proceedings scheduled for next year in Washington, DC, of a former Libyan intelligence operative accused of building the bomb that ​brought down Pan Am Flight ​103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988. White said her panel plans to meet in November and would also look at whether family members of defendants should be given the ability to watch proceedings remotely as well.

The panel would also examine what restrictions would be imposed, such as if an out-of-state victim would need to watch any broadcast from within their local federal courthouse. " Read more: Panel votes to maintain ban on cameras in US federal criminal trials US federal courts to allow limited remote audio access post-pandemic (Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston)