Greg Weaver: Confiscating cameras is not a good look

It’s not often that photojournalists’ cameras get confiscated by the government, at least not in the American land of press freedom.

But that’s exactly what happened on Oct. 18, opening day of the high-profile double-murder trial underway at the Carroll County Courthouse in Delphi.

Three still photographers and a videographer had their camera equipment taken away by sheriff’s deputies because the officers believed the journalists were capturing images of jurors as they arrived outside the courthouse—something expressly forbidden by Special Judge Frances Gull in her written rules of decorum.

A court order signed by the judge on Oct. 18 says authorities immediately looked at images stored on a Sony camcorder belonging to NBC’s Eric Arnold and found that they, indeed, included jurors. The officers then rounded up the cameras of three other nearby photographers.

Gannett’s Alex Martin was among them. He told IndyStar he did not take photos of jurors but that his camera equipment was confiscated, anyway.

The judge’s order does not explicitly say whether all of the confiscated cameras contained images of jurors, but it does say each of the photographers violated the judge’s decorum rules and bans them from covering the proceedings. It also notes that memory cards were removed from all the cameras so images of jurors could be deleted.

Three days later, on Oct. 21, the judge issued a notice that camera equipment was being returned to the journalists.

Not a lot else is known publicly about the situation because the photographers, their media outlets and their lawyer aren’t talking. And the judge has made it clear in her orders of decorum that she and her staff won’t submit to interviews while the trial is underway.

But there are a lot of questions about this situation that demand answers.

Certainly, if the journalists set out to defy the judge’s order and sneak photos of jurors, the punishment was appropriate.

I don’t have enough facts to know whether that was the case. But it’s hard to imagine that all four journalists would want to do something that gets them banned from the trial.

The more likely scenario is that there was some misunderstanding—that the journalists perhaps didn’t realize the vans pulling up to the courthouse were transporting the jurors and inadvertently took some photos.

It was the first day of the trial, so journalists and sheriff’s deputies were all getting used to their roles. Did the deputies warn the journalists that the jurors were arriving and to stand down? Martin said he was standing in an area designated as OK for media photographers, so maybe the jurors shouldn’t have been dropped off in eyesight of that area?

Regardless of the answers, the confiscation of cameras isn’t a good look for the court or the media involved.

The judge certainly has an obligation to protect the privacy of the jurors and ensure a fair trial for Richard Allen, who is accused of abducting and killing teens Abigail Williams and Liberty German in February 2017.

But the media also has a right and a responsibility to report on the proceedings while making a good-faith effort to follow the court’s rules.

My hope is that, after the trial is over, the news organizations, Gull and the Indiana Supreme Court will be willing to explore the circumstances surrounding the confiscation and work to find a better balance in the future.•

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Weaver is the editor at Indiana Lawyer. Email him at gweaver@ibj.com.