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D.A. Martha Coakley examines “trial by media” phenomenon
By Jessica Ullian
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Middlesex County District Attorney Martha Coakley (LAW’79) discussed media coverage of criminal cases at the School of Law on February 17. Photo by Linda Haas |
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In March of 2003, the safe return of 15-year-old kidnapping victim Elizabeth Smart launched a media frenzy. News of Smart’s abduction and return appeared on every major news station in the country, and in interviews her family and parents of other abducted children urged lawmakers to enact the Amber Alert law, a nationwide system to locate missing children. One month later, the legislation was passed — demonstrating, according to Middlesex County District Attorney Martha Coakley, the powerful relationship between the media and the law.
“It was an enormously successful campaign,” said Coakley (LAW’79), who gave this year’s Max M. Shapiro Lecture in Trial Advocacy at the School of Law on February 17. “It’s interesting that when a particular issue catches the public’s attention because of the media attention on it, you can mobilize the Congress of the United States — which is not so easy to do.”
Many prosecutors can speak with authority on the relationship between the media and the justice system, but Coakley is particularly knowledgeable. Since arriving at the D.A.’s office in 1986, she has investigated and prosecuted some of the most high-profile cases in the state’s history — including the Commonwealth v. Louise Woodward, the famous “shaken-baby” case of 1997, and the Commonwealth v. Thomas Junta, the 2002 “hockey dad” case.
“It takes a particular blend of courage, conviction, and compassion to speak on behalf of victims, many who can no longer speak for themselves,” said interim LAW Dean Maureen O’Rourke, who introduced Coakley. “I have a great deal of respect for the job that Martha does, and I also have a lot of admiration for the way she does it.”
In her talk, Media Coverage of Criminal Cases: What Is the Responsibility of the Fourth Estate? Coakley examined various well-known cases and the effect that media coverage had on the people involved, on the outcome, and on the aftermath. The media play an important role, she said, but must be aware of their responsibility to seek accuracy, balance, and dignity.
“We depend on the media to keep us honest,” she said. “It does and should keep us on our toes. But we do believe in trial by jurors, trial by peers, and not trial by media.”
A variety of factors makes a crime or a trial compelling, she said, such as the violence involved, the identities of the victim and of the perpetrator, and the nature of their relationship — “the trust that’s been violated.” The prototypical case that “meets all the criteria for why you’d find a story on top of the media’s list,” she said, was the People v. O. J. Simpson in 1994 — it involved homicide, an intriguing relationship between the victim and the accused perpetrator, and the added issue of race relations. But the case became such a spectacle, she said, that the crime itself was overlooked and the ruling accomplished nothing for social change.
“The defense, in my mind, was able to totally distract the jury from what the issue was here,” she said. “This case was unraveling right in front of your eyes. It didn’t teach us anything; it didn’t change anything.”
The Woodward case was similarly influenced but had a more valuable outcome. The verdict, Coakley said, was profoundly affected by media “spin,” but the coverage led to a greater awareness of child abuse. Woodward, a British nanny, was accused of killing her employers’ eight-month-old son by shaking him roughly enough to inflict head trauma. When the local newspapers began covering the case, Coakley said, they treated Woodward like a celebrity, writing lead stories about her and putting her photo at the top of the front page. “The spin on it, from our point of view, was that she couldn’t have done this; it doesn’t make sense,” Coakley said. “She was treated as someone who had maybe been misjudged by the system.”
Woodward was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to time already served, but Coakley said some good came of the media onslaught — new knowledge about child abuse and the awareness of what became known as shaken baby syndrome. “The important thing,” she said, “was that people understood that this is how children are hurt.”
Media interest is not always detrimental to a prosecutor’s efforts, however, and Coakley offered the cases involving sexual abuse by priests as an example. In 1993, when Father James Porter was tried for molestation, she said, the community reacted with disbelief and perceived the prosecutors as overzealous. In 2002, when a similar scandal emerged involving several other priests, the Boston Globe report that prompted the investigation played a significant role in changing attitudes. As a result, legislation addressing issues of liability and the statute of limitations is under review.
She concluded by addressing the need to continually rethink the roles of the press and the justice system in view of the conflicts that have recently emerged. The Boston Herald was ordered last week to pay $2.1 million in damages to a judge who filed a libel suit against the paper, claiming a reporter fabricated quotations and used others out of context. Reporters for the New York Times and Time magazine may face jail time for refusing to name their sources to a grand jury investigating a CIA information leak, and last year, a Providence, R.I., reporter was convicted of criminal contempt of court when he refused to identify the source of a videotape that reportedly showed a city official taking a bribe.
“There’s no easy way to say, in any case, how are we going to apply First Amendment rights,” Coakley said. “It will be a difficult battle.”
25
February 2005
Boston University
Office of University Relations