Court Opinion

ID: 9752770
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 18:33:57.847603+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:27:22.116989
License: Public Domain

Peck, J.,
dissenting. In considering the merits of the majority opinion in this case, I was reminded of a brief exchange, con*359tained in a dialogue between Hamlet and that meddlesome old fussbudget Polonius in Shakespeare’s play.1 Finding the Prince reading a book, the old man inquires, “What do you read, my lord?” To which Hamlet responds, “Words, words, words.”
Notwithstanding the legalese which characterizes the majority opinion,2 it is completely devoid of even a pretension of analysis, to say nothing of a genuine balancing. Rather it adopts a sort of “monkey see, monkey do” approach, relying, inter alia, on broad conclusory and unsupported statements contained in opinions from other jurisdictions, and the purest of speculation without anything at all to raise it above the level of unadulterated guessing as to what would or would not happen in certain circumstances.
The majority acknowledges the need to balance “the right of access to criminal proceedings . . . [under the First Amendment] against the Sixth Amendment right of a criminal defendant to a fair trial.” It is clear enough, however, that this acknowledgment is the only recognition of balancing forthcoming. The opinion from start to finish bears not the slightest resemblance to any fair concept of balancing.
The media interests here so obviously hold the majority in thrall that the outcome is not in doubt for a minute. The opinion throughout gives undiluted primacy to the media’s First Amendment rights, treating the Sixth Amendment rights of a defendant, not as a co-equal constitutional guarantee, but as no more than a pestiferous, nitpicking nuisance, standing momentarily in the way, to be disposed of as summarily as may be. The opinion treats media rights as supreme and the defendant’s rights to a fair trial as secondary and virtually nonexistent ex*360cept in the most egregious and unlikely circumstances that can be imagined. And this, notwithstanding both are clear and equally constitutional rights.
Chief Justice Allen hit the target squarely, albeit more politely than my concern permits me to emulate, in his concurring opinion: “It is difficult to conceive of a fact pattern where sealing or closure could ever be granted under the substantial probability standard.” (Emphasis added.) I agree with the view of the Chief Justice to the extent of that statement. It exposes the majority’s exercise in constitutional favoritism and inexcusable obeisance to the media on the one hand and, on the other, its relative indifference to the extreme uncertainty confronting a defendant.
The result reached by the majority, together with the one-sided rationale employed in the opinion to justify that result, must be a bitter pill for defendants-to-be in criminal cases, as well as the defense bar generally, and others who are concerned that those who stand before the courts charged with a crime receive the fair trial (in fact, not just theory) to which they are entitled.
It is the epitome of irony, in the light of today’s decision, that an accused in a criminal case is supposedly presumed innocent until the state proves his guilt beyond the shadow of a doubt. He should receive from the court every protection possible in support of that presumption, to the end that the trial which lies before him is in fact a fair trial beyond any question, before an unbiased jury with as little foreknowledge as it is humanly possible to provide.
The majority opinion is slanted towards the ultimate result from the outset. In the opening paragraph it cites, as the primary and underlying issue, the argument of the media-appellants that their constitutional rights under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution were violated by certain orders of the trial court.
It is significant that even at this preliminary stage the majority indicates no concern whatever for defendant’s right to a fair trial; indeed, this right is addressed in the opinion only in relation to its impact on First Amendment rights. The whole thrust of the opinion is a labored attempt to “get around” the defendant’s Sixth Amendment fair trial rights with arguments that *361are pure theorizing, speculation, and assumptions having no counterpart in reality. The opinion is a dark monument to those who take up residence in the ivory tower of theory, as distinguished from practical and actual experience in the real world.
I have reservations that the so-called underlying issue identified by the majority, that is, whether appellants’ First Amendment rights were violated, considered in isolation, is relevant at all. Nevertheless, for purposes of argument only, I will assume, at this point, that those rights were violated by the challenged orders of the court. I would add, however, that, in fact, it is not the underlying issue at all; to say it is gives a one-sided and unwarranted emphasis on media rights at the expense of Sixth Amendment rights. It is equally important in every respect, however, to determine whether defendant’s Sixth Amendment rights were also violated.
With that arguendo assumption, my initial response is a colloquial “So what?” To understand the real issue here one need only ask the very simple question: given a potential conflict between First and Sixth Amendment rights, which has primacy? Before concluding this dissent, it will be necessary to add and examine an additional factor, that is, whether these potentially conflicting interests can be validly reconciled or balanced. At the outset, however, I will assume they cannot and proceed on that basis.
The obeisance which the courts so often make to the news media is difficult to understand. Except to the extent the courts have played their games with the phrase “freedom of the press,” the First Amendment guarantees the media, with some limited exceptions such as national security, no more than the rights which every individual enjoys equally; that is, to inquire into, and investigate, the workings of their government. The media has, of course, a clear advantage because of the resources, including facilities, equipment, personnel, and time available to support investigations. There is relatively little if any necessary significance to the words “freedom of the press” which, technically at least, confers no greater rights on the media than those shared by every individual citizen.
Whatever may be said for rights of access to public records and documents granted by statute, common law, or both, it is not a result of the First Amendment. As the latter is struc*362tured, it insures the right of the news media to inquire and investigate freely and without being hampered by state or federal law. Standing alone, it imposes no reciprocal obligation on governmental agencies or their officials and employees to open their files to anyone, give out requested information orally, or respond to questioning. It is a hands-off mandate only; it does not order cooperation. The political consequences of failures and refusals to cooperate may not be salutary in many cases, but that is not the issue here. Rights of public and media access, and obligations on government to disclose, are creatures of the common law and statutes, not the First Amendment.
It is also true that the First Amendment imposes no obligation, no duty, on the media to investigate or to publish anything; its boundaries are limited generally only by its own discretion. No one denies the great importance of the First Amendment as it relates to the news media, even though the actual exercise of these rights are often controversial in the face of insensitivity, sensationalism, and unconscionable — even if technically legal — intrusion into individual privacy. Nevertheless, the public’s knowledge of their government, and governmental agencies and officials, would be seriously endangered without those rights. So much for the First Amendment.
Turning to the Sixth Amendment, one thing has always impressed me. It is one of the relatively few sections of the Bill of Rights which addresses the rights of individuals, as individuals, rather than collectively by class. Thus, the provisions refer to the defendant in a criminal prosecution in the singular: “the accused shall.. ..” It is this same accused (understood) who is entitled to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; “to be confronted by the witnesses against him”; to obtain “witnesses in his favor,” and the “Assistance of Counsel for his defense” (emphasis added). On the other hand, the First Amendment by its specific language (assembly, petition for redress) or its clear intent, protects certain freedoms of “the people” or special classes thereof, in a collective sense.
I would not be understood to suggest that individuals are any the less protected than their class as a whole under the First Amendment. Nevertheless, the different styles in which the two amendments are drafted points up the striking differences in the status of those affected by the First on the one hand, and *363the Sixth on the other. An accused, far more often than not, stands alone, while the public — as spectator to his plight — may well be hostile to him if the charge involves a particularly vicious crime of violence or has some other sensational aspect. The so-called presumption of innocence is, I fear, all too often regarded with cynicism; a charge alone is, I suspect, all too often enough to generate a presumption of guilt rather than innocence.
Yes, an accused stands alone. Seldom, with a scattered handful of notable and magnificent exceptions,3 will he find any one or more persons who will rally behind him. Moreover, an accused has the full panoply of the state, county, or municipal law enforcement and prosecutorial resources arrayed against him.
To me, there is no constitutional right more sacred than that of an accused in a criminal case to receive a fair trial; as a corollary, there is no greater moral and legal duty on the courts than to employ every device at their disposal to insure that the right is fully protected. This duty is ill-served by reliance on such purely subjective legal placebos as “substantial probability,” “reasonable likelihood,” and others, which lie within the capacity of judicial genius to create as escape routes from the obligation of doing justice in fact in difficult situations.
The spectacle of an accused, entitled legally to be presumed innocent, standing alone in a network of technicalities, should stir the conscience of everyone regardless of how case-hardened and cynical they may have become. In my judgment, the First Amendment rights of the media, as truly important as they are, pale in comparison. The time is now to look askance at the primacy and the favoritism, extended to the media, which shows through in too many judicial opinions dealing with the problems attendant upon freedom of the media versus fair trial. To lapse momentarily into the colloquial, too many of those opinions are just “plain phoney.”
These opinions come into existence as a result of a number of factors. Among them is a seriously misguided sentiment that, except in very rare cases, primacy should be awarded to the media; rationale based, in part, on an exaggerated claim of pub-*364lie interest, pure theory, based in turn on speculation, claimed probabilities, and thinly disguised guesswork. An infamous burden is placed by the courts on the accused to demonstrate the virtually impossible, namely that access to the material before trial by the media will be prejudicial. This difficulty simplifies the ability of a court, with piously lifted eyes, to deny motions for sealing, closure, and the like, because of a defendant’s failure to satisfy the evidentiary burden placed on him, and provides a false justification for denial rulings.
In the case of an individual charged with a criminal offense, the problem of a fair trial is singularly his alone. If the offense with which he is charged, and presumed innocent until convicted, has sensational aspects, the media frequently whips up public feeling with dramatic headlines, details of the crime, interviews with officials and with others directly or indirectly involved, and the publication of pretrial documents, investigatory and other records like those relating to the case before us.4 An accused may even be confronted, figuratively at least, by a lynch-mob psychology as he is transported to and from the place of trial, and which can, and has, rubbed off on jurors and even the bench itself. Anyone familiar with the notorious Lindbergh kidnapping and child-murder case in New Jersey in the 1930s has good reason to question the fairness of the defendant’s trial. A similar public outrage, based primarily on publicity, permeated the “sensational” Leopold-Loeb murder case in Chicago in the 1920s; the attorney for the defendants recognized that his clients had no chance of acquittal by a jury and that a death sentence would most certainly follow. Accordingly he persuaded them to plead guilty and relied on his powers of persuasion to convince the court to impose life sentences instead.
I reiterate: There is nothing more sacred than the constitutional right to a fair trial; there is too much at stake within the ambit of justice to be otherwise. The courts have a high degree *365of responsibility to use every device at their command to protect that right, even at the expense of media freedom because, and I reiterate, an individual, per se, is always involved, and there is no one more helpless than the individual, guilty or innocent, caught in the toils of the law. We must not, with a sly wink in the direction of the media, invite comparison with the arachnids, saying: “Won’t you walk into my parlor,” as the spider said to the fly.
I say that the burden of proof placed on defendants by the majority, to establish prejudice, is all but impossible to satisfy, and is now made even more difficult by the standards and guidelines established today by majority fiat. This is for the very simple reason that no one is psychic, no one can predict with absolute certainty, before the fact, what will or will not prejudice the fair-trial right of a defendant.5 If the learned graybeards peering into their crystal ball decide that the publicity before trial, following disclosure, will not be prejudicial, and jurors are in fact influenced thereby to the ultimate detriment of a defendant, then, that is a lynching! Or at least a drum-head proceeding.
If a burden is to be placed anywhere, let it be on the media to demonstrate that the material demanded for publication before trial will not prejudice the accused. I do not, however, have my head in the clouds as does the majority. I recognize that placing the burden on the media is equally difficult, but what are we talking about here? We are talking about the right of an individual to a fair trial in fact.
In the case before us, which is typical, the accused did not invite the media to participate, nor was the latter under the slightest obligation to do so. It intruded, regardless of its right, entirely as a matter of its own discretion and judgment. In doing so, however, it trapped the accused into two battles instead of one. If the case against him had not been dismissed, he would have had to employ his time, attention, and efforts in fighting a *366sort of subcase, before he could finalize his underlying case and defend himself; efforts which are almost inevitably hopeless and futile; “All hope abandon, ye who enter here!”6
I have agreed to an arguendo assumption that the rights of the media-appellants under the First Amendment were violated. I added, however, that, standing alone, that was irrelevant, unless addressed in the context of the rights of accused to a fair trial under the Sixth Amendment. Thus, it is obvious that the violation of the rights guaranteed by either of the two amendments, standing alone, is not the determining issue.
The true issue here has three prongs: first, does the constitutional freedom of the press conflict with the defendant’s equally constitutional right to a fair trial under the Sixth Amendment? Secondly, if there is a conflict under the facts of this case, can it be reconciled, or, in other words, rendered harmless to the point that, in effect, the conflict no longer exists and both rights are accommodated? Finally, if the conflict cannot be reconciled, which one of the two conflicting constitutional rights has primacy?
The greatest danger encountered in fair-trial versus media cases is the possibility that the jurors will have been so influenced by pretrial publicity that they have become irredeemably biased or prejudiced against an accused. This Court has, in the past, spoken out often and sternly of its sensitivity and concern for the rights of defendants to a trial by an unbiased jury. It is a right which may be waived only by the accused personally, and only by a knowing and intelligent waiver. State v. Bailey, 144 Vt. 86, 102, 475 A.2d 1045, 1054 (1984). This Court has a duty to set aside a guilty verdict when the record discloses even a possible infringement of his right to a jury untainted by any suspicion of extraneous influence. State v. Woodard, 134 Vt. 154, 158, 353 A.2d 321, 323-24 (1976). The test for jury prejudice, through extraneous influences and considerations, is not whether such irregularities actually influenced the result, but whether they had the capacity for doing so. Id. at 156-57, 353 A.2d at 323 (quoting State v. Ovitt, 126 Vt. 320, 324, 229 A.2d 237, 240 (1967)).
*367It is clear, by the strategy it employs in reaching its decision, that the majority recognizes that defendant’s Sixth Amendment right to a fair trial was actually or potentially violated. If that were not so there would have been no need to undertake the laborious reconciliation route it pretends to follow. The opinion commences, for all practical purposes, by announcing its intent to balance the First and Sixth Amendment rights involved and thus determine primacy. This is just another way of saying that the opinion seeks to reconcile the differences. There would be nothing to reconcile or balance if there was no conflict; primacy would be self-determining.
Be the above as it may, the majority moves on with its balancing pretense by mounting the battlements of its ivory tower where, notwithstanding our holdings referenced above, that the test for jury prejudice is not whether irregularities actually influenced the result, but whether they had the capacity to do so, State v. Woodard, 134 Vt. at 157, 353 A.2d at 323, it substitutes theories involving abstract speculation, guesswork and, as noted earlier, semantics, in the form of purely subjective legalistic placebos to ease its conscience, and places an all but impossible burden on the one who is the most in need of protection. The real world of practical experience and common sense lies so far below that it is out of sight of those above; their legalistic formula-ridden sport is never disturbed.
Essentially the majority recite two devices for use by the trial courts when balancing First and Sixth Amendment rights. Most unhappily for any fair trial expectations, they are all so heavily weighted against defendants in criminal matters that the result in all cases, except a rare few in the most exaggerated and unlikely circumstances, is guaranteed to the media. What an insult to, and a mockery of, justice! It is not a balancing in any real sense, any more than if a 250 pound man is weighed against a 10 pound baby to determine which one is the heavier. As a matter of reality, is there any doubt at all as to which end of the scale will make down weight? Of course not; nor is there any doubt here as the majority engages in its pretense of balancing.
The first device championed by the majority is a change of venue. I find it hard to believe that this hoary old chestnut is still taken as seriously as it might have been in the dear dead *368days beyond recall, before news gathering and almost instant dissemination to the public moves as rapidly as it does today.
Chief Justice Allen, concurring in State v. Tallman, 148 Vt. 465, 476, 537 A.2d 422, 429 (1987), was squarely on target when he quoted from Gannett Co. v. DePasquale, 443 U.S. 368, 378 (1979) (emphasis added):
The danger of [pretrial] publicity ... is particularly acute, because it may be difficult to measure with any degree of certainty the effects of such publicity on the fairness of the trial.
I would go even further than the Chief Justice and recognize that, as a practical reality, it is more than difficult, it is impossible, even after the fact, to say nothing of before the publicity is released, to measure its effects on the fairness of trial.7
The whole “favored nation” treatment — to borrow a phrase— afforded the media by the courts, and denied to criminal defendants in these cases, is unfair beyond comprehension. Not only is the burden placed on defendants almost impossible to satisfy before the fact, but there is no way by which the human mind can ever determine, with the slightest degree of certainty, that advance publicity did not, in any way, prejudice the fair trial rights of a defendant who, by the way, is still presumed innocent at the time the challenged information is made public. I believe the applicable phrase is “black comedy,” that is, the “humor” typical, for example, of the cruel practical joker, or cynic, who arrogantly makes sport of the frailties of the human condition. Thus, in A Midsummer-Nights Dream, III, ii, Puck, who is a champion among practical jokers if ever there was one, mocks, “Lord, what fools these mortals be!” and later, the duke comments on a tragic love affair as “very tragical mirth. Merry and tragical!” Id. V, i. Shakespeare has a phrase for all occasions!
As noted above, the defendant did not invite the media to intervene. It was entirely the appellants’ decision. Why, in the *369name of fair play and reason, should the serious, complex and worrisome problems which already confront defendant in preparing to defend himself be doubled by placing the impossible burden of proving the impossible, in a matter wholly collateral to the underlying case, on the defendant? It is the media, not the defendant, which is responsible for enmeshing the latter in two separate litigation problems rather than the one he anticipated. Why is it any more difficult for the media to demonstrate that publicity will not prejudice the defendant than for the defendant to prove that it will? One can never say, with the slightest degree of certainty, that publicity did not result in prejudice.
It is unconscionable to place the burden of going forward on a defendant in a collateral phase of his case, which he did not institute and for which he is in no way responsible or accountable. This seems inappropriate, if for no other reason than the virtual impossibility of satisfying the burden. The burden is made doubly onerous when we consider that the defendant has no way of knowing the exact form pretrial publicity will take until it is too late, or how the publicity will be written. Will it be, perhaps unintentionally, slanted, or some aspects thereof omitted from the publicity to the detriment of the defendant? I conclude, therefore, that a mere change of venue, as suggested by the majority as an appropriate protective device, particularly in a state as small as Vermont, coupled with placing the burden on a defendant to show that publicity will be prejudicial, is grossly unfair and an improper solution to the conflict of rights problem. It is, in fact, no solution at all; it serves only as a guarantee that the First Amendment rights of the media will inevitably be favored by this Court, and a defendant’s right to a fair trial ignored, or favored with pietistic lip-service only, as seems to be the case here.
Vermont is one of the smallest states in the union, both in population and area. This is not California, New York, Illinois, Texas, Florida or New Jersey, among others, where either or both area and population far exceed ours. Although it is questionable, even in those jurisdictions-, particularly in sensational cases, a change of venue might be a more arguably efficacious alternative. Nevertheless, to compare little Vermont to these states in order to justify a venue change here as a resolution to *370the conflict of rights is laughable, albeit, “very tragical mirth.” Statewide coverage, at least of sensational matters, is inevitable. Even if the extent of media coverage may lessen with distance, be assured it will revive and expand in the new venue to which the case has been transferred, once the change is made and becomes public knowledge.
The second device suggested by the majority as insuring that all jurors are free of any bias or prejudice against an accused resulting from pretrial publicity is the voir dire. The opinion speaks with laudatory enthusiasm — about as naive and credulous as anyone can get, especially one trained in the law and with even a minimum of trial experience — for the ability of clever and experienced trial counsel to separate out the wheat from the chaff when testing the qualifications of those summoned as prospective jurors.
The essential difficulty with the voir dire claim is, as in the change of venue theory, its remoteness from the slightest conformity with reality. For reasons that I can account for only as expediency in smoothing the path of media interests, the majority speaks glowingly of what a skillful attorney can accomplish on voir dire. This takes for granted as a given fact that the defense bar — to a man — consists of Clarence Darrows or better; highly competent, highly skillful, infallible judges of human nature, and all prospective jurors are bumbling idiots and trembling putty in the hands of these paragons of defense advocacy. My repetition grows tiresome, I’m sure, but what else can I say than that this is patently unfair, inexcusably slanted theorizing that has nothing whatever to do with reality.
I do not intend to demean the defense bar or the bar generally. The problem is simply that the majority opinion indulges in the convenient assumption that attorneys who represent criminal defendants are an organization of mind-reading supermen, skilled and qualified at an impossibly high level, thus permitting the opinion to stress relentlessly and repeatedly the First Amendment rights of the media, at the same time it speaks of what skilled counsel may be able to accomplish on voir dire.
The opinion quotes from Press-Enterpise I to the effect that the First Amendment rights cannot be overcome by mere conclusory assertions relating to the fair trial rights of a defendant. It is not necessarily impressive that it is the United States *371Supreme Court being quoted. Are media assertions that publicity, which does not even exist at the time of suppression hearings, any less conclusory or purely subjective? The opinion continues, (quoting the Third Circuit in United States v. Martin, 746 F.2d at 973), “[TJesting by voir dire remains . . . [an] effective means of determining a juror’s impartiality and assuring the accused of a fair trial.” This is an unfortunately unfair, self-serving statement, slanted entirely to favor the media and the majority decision. It is impossible to say in any case whether the voir dire has or not been effective to disclose any juror bias or prejudice. Martin is no more than wishful thinking at a high level.
Where is the empirical evidence which supports this blandly asserted effectiveness? There is none. The majority is quick enough to castigate the defense for an insufficiency of evidence; in fact, the evidence is insufficient only because the majority says it is. It is more than adequate, and once more we see favoritism.
I return again to the injustice of placing the burden on the defendant to show that disclosure will prejudice his right to a fair trial. There is no “balancing” involved in this, yet it would be no more onerous to assign the burden to the media. It is the media, after all, who want certain materials. Nor does the majority suggest how anyone can ever establish with any assurance to the defendant that disclosure or access cannot possibly prejudice his case. The unfortunate truth is that no one can ever possibly know. Therefore, if a defendant is convicted, he may, for all anyone knows, languish in prison or, in some states, lose his life, because of well-concealed jury bias, while the media, the courts and the world at large move on indifferently. All the more infamous is this injustice when a defendant has been unable to satisfy the burden so casually placed on him, when an honest comparison of rights should satisfy any fair-minded and justice-sensitive person that the burden should lie with whoever wants access, including the media, to demonstrate, if they can, that disclosure will not jeopardize the defendant’s right to a fair trial — one of the most fundamental rights guaranteed to the individual as such.
As the majority opinion is structured, it tells defendants, “We will see that you have a fair trial provided, of course, it doesn’t *372get in the way of the media. Otherwise, sorry, any guarantee of a fair trial, per se, is irrelevant.” The fair approach should be to say to the media, “You ask for access to certain pretrial material, and defendant objects on the grounds that the release and publication of this material may be prejudicial; you have the right of access and publication provided you establish that it will not prejudice the defendant’s right to a fair trial.”
There was a time, I think, when the courts took pride in guarding the “individual” against the incursions of the powerful. Now, it seems, that pride was timorous, a jerry-rigged vessel which comes unstuck all too easily.
As a practical matter, it is virtually impossible to “prove” the effect of something that has not even happened, except by unmitigated guesswork, speculation and crystal ball-gazing. I would, therefore, favor even the most revolutionary concept, as I am sure it will be regarded, that the motions like those made by defendant here should be granted as a matter of right. I can think of no other way to insure with any certainty that defendant’s right to a fair trial could not be endangered by pretrial prejudice against him on the part of any prospective jurors as a result of foreknowledge engendered by publicity.
The familiar arguments made by the media, that publicity enables the public to monitor its courts and the judicial process, are the clawings of a paper tiger, shadow without substance, bordering on the outright silly. There is very little, if anything, of importance in pretrial material that does not become manifest at trial. On the one hand, the courts “pretend” to favor juries with as little foreknowledge as possible, as insurance against any pretrial mind-set prejudicial to a defendant. On the other hand, these same courts encourage and protect even the most detailed, repetitive and continuing publicity generated by the media, which, even at its best, gives rise to uncertainty, and then, cynically, places the “burden of proof” on the hapless defendant to establish the likelihood of prejudice, citing such patent-medicine-show cure-alls as venue changes and the voir dire — Janus incarnate.
Motions such as those filed here are generally initiated by defendants. There might be grounds for considerable caution in those rare cases where similar motions are originated by the State; there is no similar caution warranted in granting pretrial *373sealing and suppression motions involving media publicity filed by the defense.
Except as otherwise noted herein, I must reluctantly include in this dissent those lines of the concurring opinion which condone placing the burden of proving the virtually impossible on defendants in these cases. I have explained my reasons above.

 “Hamlet,” II, ii.

 I hasten to add, with appropriate blushes, before someone else does it for me, that this dissent is no less “wordy” than the majority opinion, and suffers from repetition. Nevertheless, I like to think that I have analyzed the situation presented to us on the basis of reality, which I believe the majority has failed to do on any basis. The repetition has two parents: the genuine concern I feel at an unjust result leads me to emphasize and reemphasize certain aspects of the ease: the real world consequences thereof, the primacy accorded First Amendment rights at the unconscionable expense of the Sixth Amendment, and secondly, my empathy for the depths into which the majority has plunged those seeking their rights to a fair trial; “de profanáis” indeed!

 Vide the Sacco-Vanzetti case in this country, and the Dreyfus “affair” in France.

 Media sensationalism often feeds on itself. Once public opinion and sentiment has been stimulated by reportorial techniques, the media frequently continues “the good thing” it has created, rubbing its hands in glee and sends its minions abroad to report at length on the opinions of various “experts” and other sources, on the possibility of a fair trial in the light of the very publicity the media itself has generated.

 The media-appellants recognize the difficulty but put a back-spin on the ball, criticizing the trial court’s orders as based upon “presumed damage and not actual damage of defendant’s rights.” Very conveniently, of course, it evades the real issue of how a defendant can ever prove the “reasonable probability” of the “actual” damage which will result from an act that has not yet happened. This is an inappropriate attempt to apply tort language.

 Dante, “Inferno” canto III.

 The dangers to defendants inherent in pretrial publicity through the media are two-fold: first, publication of the material itself as it is baldly stated, and second, the manner in which it is presented through editing, creative writing and other elements of composition prior to publication, which can never be anticipated.