Judge in Prop 8 Case Opts to Open Court via YouTube
BY Nancy Scola | Thursday, January 7 2010
Maybe this is what justice would have looked like had King Solomon had YouTube at his disposal. We noted yesterday that opponents and proponents of same-sex marriage in California were battling over whether or not cameras should be allowed to televise next week's Perry v. Schwarzenegger trial, a case where two Alameda County women are suing the Governator and various other state officials for denying them a marriage license after the passage of Proposition 8. There's been a big move on that front.
Judge Vaughn Walker has just come up with an option (c) -- allow cameras to record the proceedings in real time, and then post the videos to YouTube on the District Court's new channel at YouTube.com/USDCCAND. The San Francisco Chronicle's Bob Egelko has the story. There will be a time lag from a few hours to several hours between what's happening in Walker's courtroom and the posting of videos to YouTube, and Walker will have the option of blacking out the faces of witnesses or muting their voices during their testimony, addressing a concern raised by opponents that broadcasting the proceedings would be witnesses at risk. "I've always thought that if the public could see how the judicial process works, they would take a somewhat different view of it," said the judge.
But there is still a question that remains here about what using time-delayed YouTube postings really accomplish. It looks a lot like Walker could have had the option of protecting witness identities and otherwise shaping what the world sees of his courtroom, even without any gap between real events and the posting of the video. If you hop on over the the court's YouTube channel right now, you can check out Judge Walker, aided by two technicians, testing out the video equipment to be sure that mics can be silenced and witness feeds turned at the judge's command -- and in real time.