Dixon judge lays down the law: no more cell-phone use in court

After a week and a half of reporters sending Twitter updates from Mayor Sheila A. Dixon’s trial using their cell phones, the judge in the case issued a stern reminder Thursday that the practice is forbidden.

“You should not be using any electronic device or cell phone in the courtroom,” Visiting Judge Dennis M. Sweeney said. “If you can’t divorce yourself from that habit you probably shouldn’t be here with us. The sheriffs have asked me to enforce that.”

He added that the sheriff’s deputies would remove anyone seen using a cell phone.

The media protocol issued before the trial was unequivocal on the use of cell phones inside the courtroom.

“Members of the media shall not use cellular telephones within 100 feet of Courtroom 230 during the course of these proceedings,” the protocol said. “All cellular phones, pagers, PDA’s, etc., must be turned off during court proceedings.”

Still, the directive was ignored by at least some members of the media, who “tweeted” trial updates from their phones while in the courtroom.

Maryland Judiciary spokesman Darrell Pressley, who has been in charge of dealing with the media during the trial, said he never saw anyone tweeting from the courtroom. He said he knew reporters were sending tweets, but when he asked them about it, they said they were stepping out of the courtroom to do so.

Sweeney has no problem with reporters sending tweets from elsewhere about the trial, Pressley said, but the judge grew concerned when he heard about a blog post that implied tweeting was happening from the gallery of the courtroom itself.

“I believe there was something in a blog today, this morning, that blogged, as it were, that it was actually happening inside the courtroom,” he said.

He did not know which blog carried that news.

The local blogs Baltimore Brew and OnQ Social Media Consulting both carried posts this week about how The Sun was not tweeting from court but other outlets — including The Daily Record — were.

Two reporters from The Daily Record were among those who sent tweets from inside the courtroom. Both said Pressley never asked them about it.

Distraction factor

Courtroom tweeting is an emerging issue for the judiciary, and courts have adopted a variety of policies toward media use of Twitter during trials.

For example, earlier this month, a federal judge in Georgia declined to allow a reporter to use Twitter during a corruption trial, ruling that tweeting is “broadcasting of judicial proceedings from the courtroom,” which is banned under the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure.

He wrote that there would be a “media room” where reporters could use their electronic devices.

University of Maryland School of Law professor William Reynolds said the judge correctly interpreted the rule. But, Reynolds added, he is in favor of allowing courtroom tweets.

“Do I think it’s a good idea to ban it?” he asked. “I think courtrooms should be completely open. I think TV trials should be permitted, so I think Twitter should be permitted as long as it’s done unobtrusively.”

In February, a federal judge in Kansas allowed a reporter to send tweets from a gang trial, and last year, an Iowa federal judge allowed media to live-blog a fraud trial.

During last year’s O.J. Simpson robbery trial in Las Vegas, the Clark County Courts banned cell phones in the courtroom — and actually had spectators hand over their phones when they entered — but maintained a media room where reporters could view a live broadcast of the trial and tweet at will.

“For a big trial like that, it’s the distraction factor,” said Michael Sommermeyer, court information officer for Clark County, Nev.

He said that too many cell phones in use in the courtroom can actually interfere with the workings of the audio equipment the court itself uses to record the proceedings.

“In general, the very act of sitting in a courtroom tweeting, as long as it’s discreet and it’s not a distraction …, that by itself is not a problem,” Sommermeyer said.

When 32 people are doing it at once, though, it is distracting to the trial participants, he said.

Everyone obeyed the no cell-phone rule in the Simpson case, Sommermeyer said — until a stenographer used his phone to snap a picture inside the courtroom.

Weighting the rights

Courtroom tweets implicate three constitutional provisions, said Mark D. Rasch, a Bethesda lawyer and consultant on privacy and technology issues: the Sixth Amendment right to trial by an impartial jury, the Sixth Amendment right to a public trial, and the First Amendment guarantee of a free press.

Any judge is going to weight the right to an impartial jury more heavily than the other constitutional protections, Rasch said. That said, tweeting should generally be allowed in court, he opined.

“Is there a fundamental difference — and there isn’t, in my opinion — between a journalist in the back of the courtroom taking notes for a piece they’re going to write at lunchtime or taking notes for a piece that they’re writing on the fly?” asked Rasch, who consults for Secure IT Experts LLC. There is “no difference between them unless one or the other of them has some impact on what’s going on in the courtroom.”

Eric B. Meyer, an employment lawyer at Dilworth Paxson LLP in Philadelphia who advises companies on social media policies, said that eventually, the courts will have to take on Twitter directly.

“It’s a way to communicate quickly, and the courts certainly in future iterations of the rules of criminal and civil procedure are going to have to address this,” he said.

Daily Record reporter Robbie Whelan contributed to this story.