Opinion ID: 199998
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: analysis: the second petition

Text: 57 We next grapple with THE JOURNAL'S request for copies of the videotapes and audiotapes played at trial. In Cox Broadcasting Corp. v. Cohn, 420 U.S. 469, 494-97, 95 S.Ct. 1029, 43 L.Ed.2d 328 (1975), the Supreme Court concluded that the media has a First Amendment right to publish information contained in court records that are open to public inspection. A few years later, however, the Court rejected the argument that the First Amendment right of access allowed the media to obtain copies of tapes that had been entered into evidence at a criminal trial. Warner Communications, 435 U.S. at 608-10, 98 S.Ct. 1306. Elaborating on this point, the Justices explained that the constitutional right to attend criminal trials morphed into a right to attend the trial sessions at which the tapes were played and to report upon what was seen and heard in the courtroom, but did not confer the right to replicate evidentiary materials in the custody of the court. Id. at 609, 98 S.Ct. 1306. 58 Warner Communications is directly applicable here. As in that case, the district court has not restricted media access to, or the publication of, any information in the public domain. Indeed, the district court has gone to great lengths to facilitate access to the trial proceedings by, for example, reserving seats in the courtroom for members of the press and providing an overflow room for remote viewing. By affording interested members of the media ample opportunity to see and hear the tapes as they are played for the jury, the court has fulfilled its pertinent First Amendment obligations. See United States v. Beckham, 789 F.2d 401, 407 (6th Cir.1986). 59 The demise of THE JOURNAL'S First Amendment claim does not end the matter. The question remains whether the common-law right to inspect and copy judicial documents affords a basis for relief. As said, this right of access extends to materials on which a court relies in determining the litigants' substantive rights. Anderson, 805 F.2d at 13. Thus, videotapes and audiotapes on which a court relies in the determination of substantive rights are within its reach. See United States v. Graham, 257 F.3d 143, 151-53 (2d Cir.2001). Because the videotapes and audiotapes that THE JOURNAL seeks to copy have been admitted into evidence, they fall into this category. 60 Viewed in this light, the question reduces to whether the common-law right of access is fulfilled by permitting the press and the public to see and hear such tapes, but not to copy them. To answer this question, THE JOURNAL cites a plethora of instances in which courts have allowed media outlets to obtain copies of tapes used in judicial proceedings. E.g., id. at 155-56; United States v. Myers ( In re Application of Nat'l Broad. Co. ), 635 F.2d 945, 952-54 (2d Cir.1980). But this compendium only serves to prove that a trial court may allow the media to copy tapes that have been admitted into evidence; none of the constituent cases stands for the much different proposition that a trial court must afford such access. 61 Moreover, this case offers a unique twist. Here, the government has not merely played individual tapes, but, rather, has used cutting-edge technology (the Sanctions software) to play for the jury medleys of selected excerpts from the universe of taped material stored on its laptop computer. As a result, there is no electronic medium — no tape or CD-ROM — currently in existence that contains the precise medleys of taped excerpts that have been played in open court. Consequently, we must decide whether the common-law right of access compels a court to create (or order the creation of) a new medium that contains only taped excerpts that have been played in open court. This is a question of first impression at the appellate level. 62 Historically, the common-law right of access permitted the public to copy the contents of written documents. In re Application of Nat'l Broad. Co., 635 F.2d at 950. Over time, the right has been extended to accommodate technological advancements in document reproduction such as photography, photocopying, and the replication of videotapes and audiotapes. Id. Invariably, however, these accommodations have covered materials that are in a form that readily permits sight and sound reproduction. Id. at 952. 63 When, as now, the media seeks access to materials that do not exist in readily reproducible form, a new variable enters the equation. We are reluctant to hold that the common-law right of access necessarily compels the creation (and, thus, the copying) of such materials. We prefer instead to leave this decision, like many other decisions as to how best to effectuate the common-law right of access, to the informed discretion of the trial court, so that it may be exercised with due regard for the idiosyncratic facts and circumstances of a specific case. See Warner Communications, 435 U.S. at 599, 98 S.Ct. 1306; Anderson, 805 F.2d at 13. This approach seems especially appropriate here because the task of assessing whether the creation of an excerpt-only recording entails mere reproduction as opposed to extensive editing demands a particularized, fact-intensive inquiry. 64 This brings us to the ruling below. The district court denied THE JOURNAL'S motion, holding that the common-law right of access did not mandate the creation of something not already in existence (i.e., a tape or CD-ROM containing only those excerpts played in open court) and finding replication infeasible. In this regard, the court made a number of specific findings highlighting difficulties inherent in THE JOURNAL'S proposals for physical access to the taped excerpts. The court concluded, for example, that editing the source material to create a tape or CD-ROM containing only those excerpts played at trial was a far more daunting task than merely duplicating existing source materials. The court also found that the editing required to create tapes or CD-ROMs containing only the hundreds of taped conversations being played in open court would impose an appreciable burden on the court's staff, the parties, or both. 65 We decline THE JOURNAL'S invitation to second-guess these findings. In the first place, the parties' representations as to how the software operates and how difficult it would be to reproduce the evidence seen and heard by the jurors are sharply conflicting. As a result, the record before us is hopelessly imprecise — and the Sanctions software package is not part of it. In the second place, the fact that the public and the press have had ample opportunity to see and hear the evidentiary tapes when those tapes were played in open court during trial takes much of the sting out of the district court's decision. Given these considerations, we cannot say that the district court abused its discretion in denying THE JOURNAL'S request to compel the creation and production of excerpt-only tapes or CD-ROMs mimicking the materials actually played to the jury. 6 Cf. Valley Broad. Co. v. United States Dist. Ct., 798 F.2d 1289, 1295 & n. 8 (9th Cir.1986) (explaining that substantial administrative burdens alone may justify denial of access). 66 THE JOURNAL has a fallback position. It argues that the medleys of excerpts can be rerecorded as they are played in open court. The district court rejected this proposal based upon the clerk of court's representation that it was infeasible to tap into the audio/video feed to the broadcast monitors to rerecord the materials as they were being played in open court. The clerk explained that consultations with the court's technical staff and representatives of the vendor that had installed the courtroom presentation system had not yielded a practicable and cost-effective method of rerecording the audio/video transmission to the overflow room. The district court accepted this representation. 67 THE JOURNAL disputes the accuracy of the clerk's conclusion. Its position rests on a supplementary affidavit submitted on the eve of oral argument in this court. That affidavit suggests the existence of what THE JOURNAL describes as a technologically feasible method of rerecording the audio and video excerpts as they are played in open court. We decline to consider this belated proffer. See United States v. Slade, 980 F.2d 27, 30 (1st Cir. 1992) (It is a bedrock rule that when a party has not presented an argument to the district court, she may not unveil it in the court of appeals.). THE JOURNAL is, of course, free to ask the district court to evaluate this new proposal.