At Issue; 28; Beyond the Ruby Trial: Justice and the Press

Any tea at issued justice, composite, take one. This is the Dallas County Jail, where Jack Ruby sleeps and eats. Henry Wade, District Attorney of Dallas County, used every legal weapon he had to keep him there as a way station to the electric chair. Melvin Beli, the defense attorney, used every tactic he knew to get him out. Wade and Beli still wonder about the extensive press and television coverage of Ruby's crime and its role in this verdict. We, the jury, find the defendant guilty of murder with malice as charged in the indictment and assess his punishment at death, sign Max E. Cosby Coleman.

So say you all ladies and gentlemen, is that your unanimous verdict? Well all of you whose verdict that is please hold up your right hand. What effect does news coverage have on the verdict in a criminal trial? Why, in every criminal case, does the judge give this instruction to the jury? During the time you serve on this jury, there may appear in the newspapers or on radio or television broadcasts, reports concerning the trial, and you may be tempted to read or listen to or watch them. Please do not do so. The process of law requires that the evidence to be considered by you in reaching your verdict, meet certain standards.

As for example, that a witness testify only about facts that he has himself seen or heard, rather than what was told to him by others. And that he be subject to cross-examination. The information media are not governed by such standards in what they present. If you read, listen to or watch such reports of this trial, matter which could not be presented to you in this courtroom may reach you, and the defendant would have no chance to test it or respond to it. In fairness to the defendant, therefore, it is important that you pay strict attention to this admonition, not to read, listen to or watch any such report. Dallas is calm now, and District Attorney Henry Wade spends his days trying to catch up on a backlog of crime and unanswered mail. In an exclusive interview with that issue reporter Howard Filcher, he reflects on the question of justice and the press.

Do newspaper stories influence prospective jurors? Well, I think generally speaking, that's so they form some type of impression or you might call it an opinion from what they read in the papers. And it makes it more difficult to try cases that are highly publicized because of difficulty in getting a jury and also the possible influence of some articles. Maybe favorable to the defendant or favorable to the state in what it is. Old day long passes by stare through the windows of Melvin Billi's office in San Francisco while he works at his desk only three feet away. His surroundings induce contemplation, yet his passion for work brings Billi to his legal fishbowl each day at 4 a.m. He was asked how much responsibility he ascribed to the Dallas press for the guilty verdict in the Ruby trial. 80 percent, 80 percent, Dallas morning news, vicious, unbridled, irresponsible, designing, they whipped up the people of Dallas to do what they did.

Our problem in the Ruby case was not that we lost the case, but that we had won our case and we had set out to prove that we couldn't get a fair trial in Dallas. And we said and used these words that the citizens of Dallas would put Jack Ruby in the public have that to show that they were citizens of a city in which there was law and order. We proved that. We proved that for the appellate record. We knew that we'd have to appeal once that we kept this case in Dallas. You knew you predicted to yourself in advance that you would lose the case in front of the jury as a judge? We don't only predict it to ourselves, but that's spread upon that record every hour on the hour. We asked his honor, ex-Maro Motu of his own motion, transfer this case out of Dallas. We can't get a fair trial here, judge. If you keep this case here, they'll execute them to show how law-abiding they are.

That's what happened. Unfortunately, we proved that we set out to prove. That's the reason that I was fired because I had told that at the end. I had said that all the way through. But I left a heritage, Jack Ruby, the transcript and the record that they'll go up to on appeal. Now, the American Bar Association doesn't want the lawyer to talk apparently. They want him to file something in the appellate cards that doesn't see the light of day. I'm against that. If we didn't have press coverage, if we didn't have some of the television at this Ruby trial, if you didn't have the magazine articles, the life story by Sebel Bedford, you and the rest of the people in the United States wouldn't have known what a horrendous mistrial, the machinations of that establishment down there. What was going on? I happened to read the reports from, I'd say at least 15 of you leading newspapers in all over the country that would nail into me. In many cases, there's no resemblance to what appeared in one paper.

We've, for instance, we just had an article by a live magazine out that reported there that the factual reporting on it's about 50% inaccurate. Excuse me, are you referring to the Sebel Bedford article in Life magazine? I can see her handicapped sitting there in the courtroom taking notes, but she had the wrong person's question and witnesses and the wrong statements made by different prosecutors and different defense attorneys. Today, you can pick up two magazines in Reston's Newsweek and Time. There are no resemblance in the stories that they end up writing. That all goes back to the impression that the reporter who was covering it got of what was going on. I think if there's any restrictions, it's going to have to be in your news editors back in your paper rather than in the reporters. I don't think your reporters are going to,

I think they're still going to go out and get everything they can because they stay on them to not let the other paper beat them, you know. But I think your restriction is going to have to be at a higher level than the reporting state. What would they be, the restrictions? Well, for instance, I don't think that any newspapers should go into the evidence that's against someone prior to his trial. The evidence should be presented. I don't think the prosecutor or the police or the defense lawyer ought to go into that evidence because that's the main thing jury is going to decide whether to believe that evidence. But I think the key restraint has to be on pieces of evidence and that's what actually the press wants the most. For instance, in the Oswald thing, there we have an instrument, we all say you're filing on him. What do you have against him? How can you prove in guilt?

You see, one of the main troubles with the whole investigation of this thing. From the start, I never did talk to Oswald and planned to talk to him. So, I never did even talk to him prior to being a job. That is a situation where, for instance, on Friday night, the question came up of whether there's going to let the press go. The police officials were very devious of this because they didn't know who the press were and the press were all over the world. And the press, or at least the working press, they let out a scream that this is not Russia that we're entitled to see him. And then you had the police trying to decide whether they all let him see him or not, wondering, might well have been killed there in the police that Friday night in the police station. Arrest and the police station lead to a court of justice. In such a court, Justice Bernard S. Meyer, of the Supreme Court of Nassau County, New York, interprets the Constitution in terms of the rights of the individual. The first school prayer decision erupted from his pen.

Justice Meyer has long been worried about trial by newspaper and he cites two examples to explain his concern. One that I can think of out in Indiana, where the press went around and took, in effect, the public opinion poll, asked people what they thought on the basis of the facts as they had been presented in the case should be done with the particular defendant. And of course, there were a lot of comments about I think you should be hung. This was a dastardly crime and so forth. This kind of thing makes it very difficult to obtain a fair for an individual to obtain a fair trial. Now, my basic thesis is that there are specific things such as confessions, past criminal records, editorializing and public opinion polls concerning guilt.

That are not necessary to the public's right to know in the immediate sense, that is to say, that that kind of information can be delayed. I do not in any sense suggest that it should be prescribed completely, but it can be delayed for a sufficient period of time to permit the trial to take place. There is another down in Florida, which I think the journalism people think of as a hard chamber example. This was a situation in which the defendants were accused of rape, which is an offense punishable by death and the newspaper, there were four defendants involved in the case. They simply published on its front page four electric chairs, one right next to the other.

Nothing else was said, but of course it had the most devastating effect that anything possibly could have in terms of making clear that public opinion at least through that newspaper was that these people were guilty and should be condemned to death. The art of dealing with the press has its more subtle aspects. Among these are leaks, a past note, late afternoon drink or a quiet phone call to a favorite reporter revealing inside information. We ask Judge Meyer why both prosecution and defense attorneys use the press to absorb their news leaks. Well, of course, each I think would be prone to accuse the other as starting it, both in a sense respond to pressures from the media themselves because there are always reporters who want to know what the situation is so that they can report it for their paper or station. I give you a very good example of a clamor that was raised in 1954 when District Attorney Hogan, here in Manhattan, announced a policy that as far as his office was concerned, he would no longer permit any releases with respect to a confession by a person accused.

There was a tremendous how in the press that this was unfair, that this was a censorship that this was improper. He has carried it forward. Nonetheless, it is in my estimation a very proper thing for his office to have done and I would be hopeful that more prosecutors and more defense attorneys would emulate the example. Very often one thing is leaked and it then becomes necessary for the other side to respond. Mr. Wade isn't the press sometimes used deliberately to receive leaked stories so that public opinion can be influenced either by the defense or by the prosecution. I think it is. I know it is in some cases and I think they've done much too much. I think undoubtedly that happens in many cases.

There's lots of things in this case that were put out by both sides. After he was filed on, I didn't have anything to say about it until the opposition attorney was having a television interview twice a day and telling what he's done and what he is going to do, obviously for public consumption. In defense, I had to start once a day saying something about the cause of the word. You've got to some extent fight fire with fire. Mr. Wade, you used the phrase fed to the press to make the defendant look like an underdog. Is that what you meant when you said sometimes you have to fight fire with fire? Yes, we had to start at that early stages. I was saying nothing to the press. I went over a month, six weeks, probably saying nothing to them about our case but we were busy working on it. But we rather than let them present, see they had their own, their psychiatrists go on television and tell what they thought about them. When they had him examining, that's direct evidence, you know. And we never did have any of our psychiatrists on television or anything else.

But you get right down to the main issue and the thing was his mental state at the time and they had both of this psychiatrist and his psychologist go on television explaining their reaction after examining. The jury has heard all that, you know, and heard none of ours. Can you tell me, sir, why prosecutors and prosecution offices leak stories to the press? Well, once, be honest about that. I don't think the fall is entirely with the prosecution. I'm not really white in that. I've been guilty of that too. We feel that we have to fight fire with fire. That's the best answer. I think the prosecution and the prosecution in this case in Dallas had its leaking of stories. They leaked stories from the very beginning. They didn't have to down there because the Dallas News, the prejudiced and propagandized the very venerian without the district attorney having to do it. But directly an answer to your question in this country, because we have an unbridled press, we do try to slip something in the press now and then. It's unethical. It's wrong.

But I couldn't sit idly by down there in Dallas, despite the criticism of my brothers in the American Bar Association. I couldn't sit idly by and have the DA slipping things to the press to prejudice my client without answering. It wouldn't have been enough for me to lodge a complaint with the ABA or lodge a complaint with the Texas Bar Association. If a district attorney's office is supposed to be 100% impartial and uninterested in a verdict just for the sake of a guilty verdict, why would they leak stories to the press? Well, your 100% impartial district attorney is the Canadian and the British district attorney or the Crown Prosecutor. And I've seen the Crown Prosecutor stand up when something is favorable to the defendant and hasn't been brought out by the prosecutor of his own motion. Now, in this country, we don't do that. Now, the reason he leaks things is, number one, he's not impartial. Number two, he wants a win.

In Dallas, this district attorney wanted a win at all costs. He didn't care when I odour about that record and I say this on the record because he knew that he was putting in evidence that a second year lost student would reverse if he were sitting on the appellate court. They wanted a conviction for political expediency. They wanted a conviction for Dallas expediency. So the reason that he was leaking stuff to the press was because of his own political and Dallas political expediency. The New York Times, all the news that's fit to print. To Timesmen, this is not an idle motto. They're well aware of the paper's international reputation for integrity. Why does the press print news leaks, knowing that these disclosures are intended to sway public opinion, managing editor Turner-Kathledge comments? I don't think we consider the motives so much as we know our person discloses anything for his own reasons. Regardless of what it is, whether it's a district attorney or anybody else.

If a man says to you, we found the gun that was used in this crime. And on this gun, we found the finger prints of so and so. Those are facts. If you believe the man to be honest, those are facts. He might give them out for some sort of motive that you would even consider. We wouldn't stop for one moment to think why he did it. We live in an open society. And one of the greatest things that keeps the society open is the free use and free reading of its newspapers. In order to have free reading of newspapers, you have to have free publication newspapers. Some judgment has to be used, of course, on the part of the newspaper, but we cannot try criminal trials. There is a competitive amount of between newspapers among newspapers themselves and between newspaper and other media, which is a matter of fact. And which wets our decision and our efforts to get it news, present news. I frankly don't know whether we can control that voluntarily or not, but I'm awfully scared of any general law on the subject that goes beyond the protection of the individual in a criminal trial.

We cannot plan a strategy on which a trial is to be tried. I do have one thing in view, however this I'd like to suggest. I think of all the rights we have in our system, the right of a human being to protect his life and his liberty is perhaps of highest priority. And therefore, when a man is accused of crime and when he has threatened with the loss of his life or his liberty, every possible safeguards should be thrown around the conduct of the decision-making apparatus that's going to decide one way or the other, whether he's going free or he's going to live, whether he's going to jail or he's going to die. But I think the administration of those safeguards has to be left or has to be concentrated substantially in the courts.

In empaneling a jury, the judge asks prospective jurors if they can give a fair and impartial verdict, if they can disregard what they've read and heard about the case. Mr. Belli has a strong opinion concerning a juror's ability to disregard these stories. Some lawyers say you can't unring the bell. I think that you can. I've satisfied that jurors can and do disregard what has been said when the judge tells him to. And I've seen jurors bend over backwards to do that too. I think a lot of people disregard it and I think I know of cases where people, stuff was in the press that the jurors knew about and went ahead and found a person not guilty, you know, because the evidence didn't come out in the evidence. They're cases like that. And certainly, 12 good men and women and true could sit down and on the basis of, I thought, an on the basis of scientific evidence, properly presented, properly safeguarded by the constructions of the court, properly explained by the court.

I was sure that they could arrive at some sort of a just and rational verdict on this particular issue. Now, if a newspaper is distorting the reporting, that's another matter. And they're giving people the wrong information on which those people should make up their minds. But when you're in a criminal trial, you're supposed to, to, to, uh, record and a jurors supposed to force themselves as much as possible from anything they've read in the newspaper. I think people are strong enough to do it. Judge Meyer, when you're sitting on the bench, listening to a case, and you instruct the jury to disregard something that they've seen or read in the newspapers or on television, how effective is that instruction? If it is something like a confession, I doubt very seriously that any human being can cast that out of his mind.

And therefore, uh, it will have very little effect. There is at least one picture as jurors, jurors to at one point, said that to give such an instruction is like telling a young child to stand in the corner and not to think about a white elephant. Obviously, you can't think about anything else. I would say that in only very minor situations, can it have any real effect? Because I do not believe that there is any corrective measure, instruction to the jury, new trial, moving the trial, bringing in jurors from elsewhere, locking the jury up any of this that can effectively take the plague that can effectively do away with the prejudice once it's occurred. And that therefore, the only way to deal with it is to prevent it from occurring in the first place. Fairly or unfairly, many people use the phrase trial by newspaper. A case in point was the Bobby Baker investigation.

With that in mind, we asked Mr. Catholic, why can't newspapers gather all the information about a crime and the people involved, but with hold publication of the story until the verdict is in? I wouldn't reject a suggestion that kind out of hand. Or any other suggestion that completely out of hand is a reasonable suggestion as to how newspapers might exercise a greater degree of responsibility in the conduct of criminal trials. We have made a great deal of progress over the last many years in this respect. We have always thought, however, any rigid system under which you are held for contempt or subject to level, certainly to the degree that it's exercised in great Britain. But that progress always is made in a conflict between public curiosity, which also is public interest, and the rights of the individual. They're coming constantly into conflict, and especially so with the advent of the very severe medium of public information we have in television.

I think there's a legislative remedy. I think that both the bar association and the legislative can impose restrictions on them. You know, in England, they don't allow them to write up a crime to laugh to the trial, and the judges have authored, put the editors paper in jail, or the reporters in jail for writing various things. Do you think that we should have something along those lines in this respect? I think probably a cross between that medium, between that and what we already have. I think there'll be some restrictions on that. How about background information that the press publishes on a defendant, the fact that he committed a crime two or three years ago, and another crime four years before that? I think that's unfair to the defendant, if that's the type of thing that likely won't get before the jury, unless he tests that.

I think that's unfair to the defense. Paradoxically, I wouldn't impose any restrictions on the press in a democracy. You can. I think the press in the United States is thoroughly responsible. In this country, unbridled, you publish anything you want to. Now, you ask, shall we enforce some of the laws of contempt? We have laws in this country that a judge can hold a newspaper in contempt for publishing some of the things before a trial. You can say that the paper is influencing the jury and making it impossible to get a fair trial. Now, shall we choose in between the English system and the unbridled publishing in this country and say, cut it down the middle? I'm not ready to say so yet, because most responsible newspapers and newspapers in my own city here wouldn't publish things that would make it impossible to get a fair trial. Probably some things that hurt us, it's true. But I think that our jurors here at least in San Francisco compensate for that almost by leaning over backwards.

The law sent us the same way. Now, I'm not ready to say to bridle the press in any manner or any means, because you start bridling the press as some of the judges and some of the American barworn, bridle television, and you're ending up your democracy. This is the press trying to get a story from a handcuffed prisoner. We must have a free press, but the public's right to know and the individual's right to a fair trial collide in the newspapers and on television. Whose rights are paramount? The publics or the individuals? Why does the court feel it necessary in every criminal case to say, during the time you serve on this jury? There may appear in the press reports concerning the trial, and you may be tempted to read or listen to or watch them. Please do not do so. This is NET, National Educational Television.

Thank you.