On August 11, Hennepin County District Court Judge Peter Cahill issued a Memorandum Opinion providing the factual findings and legal conclusions [1] for his August 7th Order granting the motion of the Media Coalition for copies of two of the BWC (body-worn camera) videos of George Floyd’s arrest and killing.[2]
Preliminarily the Judge said, with citations of decisions by the U.S. and Minnesota Supreme Courts, “Cases that generate intense public interest and media scrutiny highlight the tension between two fundamental rights: the right guaranteed under the federal and state constitutions to criminal defendants to receive a fair trial before an impartial jury, on the one hand, and the right of the public and press to attend public trials, on the other hand.” Moreover, “The open processes of justice serve an important prophylactic purpose, providing an outlet for community concern, hostility, and emotion,” as was true in this very case. (P. 4.)
“The Court is committed to the management of pretrial proceedings and the eventual trial(s) not only to vindicate the public’s and press’ right of access guaranteed by the First Amendment, the common law, and court rules but also Lane and his fellow co-defendants’ Sixth Amendment rights to a fair trial, and this Court’s and the parties’ interests in seeing that justice be done by a fair and objective jury determining the facts based solely on evidence that will be admitted at trial.” (P.8.)
In so doing, the court has conducted “all hearings in these cases in public . . . [with] overflow courtrooms to facilitate the presence of interested members of the public and press.” The court “has also created special websites for each of these cases in which all publicly-available documents that have been filed . . are made available to the public and press by remote access.” (P. 9.)
The court had issued a Gag Order on July 9th in an attempt “to mitigate what some colloquially characterize as efforts ‘to try the case in the press, to seek to avoid or at least to ameliorate the prospects of unduly tainting the prospective jury pool engendered by the intense media interest and reporting on these cases, and to seek to vindicate the Defendants’ rights and the State’s interest in ensuring justice is done in these cases by a fair and impartial jury deciding whether the Defendants or guilty or not guilty on the State’s charges based solely upon the evidence produced during trial, not based upon media reporting, public speculation, and extraneous information, inadmissible at trial, circulating during the months of pretrial preparation.” (Pp. 10-11.) [3]
The Memorandum Opinion then set forth its legal reasoning for its conclusions: (1) the Media Coalition has standing to intervene (pp. 11-13); (2) the media and the public have a right under the common law and court rules to obtain copies of the BWC videos, under cited U.S. and Minnesota Supreme Court decisions and Minnesota Rules of Criminal Procedure and Rules of Public Access to Records of the Judicial Branch. (Pp. 13-19.)
Important for the court, “based on the representations [of all counsel] were the following ” all council expect the [two BWC videos in question] . . . will be admitted into evidence at the trial, that allowing members of the public and the press to obtain copies of those BWC videos does not, at this stage of the proceedings, present a substantial likelihood of interfering with the fair and impartial administration of justice and the defendants; rights to a fair trial.”
The court did not find it necessary to decide whether the media had a first amendment right to obtain copies of the videos. (Pp. 19-22.)
In a footnote, the court noted that “the fractious, highly partisan, and segmented niches served by the modern-day media and journalists . . . should resoundingly dispel the notion that journalists, as a profession, can be depended on ‘to produce complete, accurate accounts of what transpires.” (Fn. 8 at 7-8.)
Conclusion
This was a well-reasoned and written opinion.
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[1] State v. Lane, Opinion on Order Granting Motion of Media Coalition To Obtain Copies of Publicly-Filed Body-Worn Camera Video Evidence, (Court File No. 27-CR-20-12951, Hennepin County District Court, Aug. 11, 2020); Xiong, Judge says he withheld broad distribution of bodycam videos in George Floyd killing to preserve fair trial, StarTribune (Aug. 12, 2020).
[2] State v. Lane, Order Granting Motion of Media Coalition To Obtain Copies of Publicly-Filed, Body-Worn Camera Video Evidence, (Court File No. 27-CR-20-1295, Hennepin County District Court, Aug. 7, 2020); Court Orders Public Release of Bodycam Footage of George Floyd Arrest and Killing, dwkcommentaries.net (dwkcommentaries.net (Aug. 8. 2020).
[3] See Gag Order in George Floyd Murder Cases, dwkcommentaries.com (July 9, 2020).
