Judge Peter Cahill reflects on high-profile trials, allowing cameras in courtroom

[MUSIC PLAYING] CATHY WURZER: The judge who presided over one of the most high profile murder trials in Minnesota history is sharing some candid lessons learned from that important event. Hennepin County Judge Peter Cahill presided over former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin's trial last year. At a conference in Nevada yesterday, Cahill offered advice to his colleagues on managing noteworthy cases. Matt Sepic listened in on Cahill's remarks and has the details.

MATT SEPIC: Judge Peter Cahill says equal justice under the law, a phrase inscribed on the walls of courthouses across the land, remains more a goal than an accomplishment. But he says pursuing that goal is critical to ensuring that Americans trust the judicial system.

PETER CAHILL: I think we're getting better, but we are a far cry from being able to say we've done it and rest on our laurels.

MATT SEPIC: Cahill spoke to judges from around the country yesterday at the National Judicial College in Reno, Nevada. In an hour-long talk, he said some of the most dismal failures of the judiciary involved cases with racial justice at their core. Those include the infamous Dred Scott decision and the Korematsu case nine decades later that allowed the continued wartime imprisonment of Japanese-Americans. Cahill urged his fellow judges to keep racial justice in mind all of the time, even in cases as minor as a speeding ticket.

PETER CAHILL: Even if everybody in your courtroom, if you're white, old white guy like me, and everybody else in the courtroom is an old white guy, even the defendant on the speeding case, you still have to figure out, am I treating this person the same way I would somebody who was younger, different age, different ethnicity, different race? You have to constantly do.

MATT SEPIC: That the murder of George Floyd sparked racial justice protests around the world. Though Floyd was Black, and Derek Chauvin is white Cahill pointed out that race was not part of the courtroom evidence. As with most murder trials, he said this one was about the victim's cause of death and the defendant's intent. Minnesota courts largely prohibit TV coverage, but Cahill ordered an exception for the Chauvin trial because of the pandemic and the enormous interest. The judge said yesterday that ensuring public confidence in the outcome was also part of his decision.

PETER CAHILL: I was convinced that if we did not televise that trial, the results, no matter which way it went, were never going to be accepted by the community.

MATT SEPIC: Cahill gave his fellow judges pointers on how to manage their courtrooms, especially in high profile cases. One piece of advice-- don't talk too much. Here he is just before playing a clip from the trial.

PETER CAHILL: I'd like the people in the audience here to raise your hands when you think I should have stopped talking.

[LAUGHTER]

MATT SEPIC: While watching himself on video converse with the prosecutor, Cahill was quick to raise his own hand. He added later that when he sentenced Chauvin to 22 and a half years in prison, he deliberately kept his comments short. Instead, Cahill released a lengthy memo so the public could understand his reasoning without relying on soundbites. Throughout the trial, Cahill said he only got an hour or two of sleep at a stretch. He urged the judges to call a short recess when courtroom stress gets to be too much.

PETER CAHILL: You can say, let's take a five-minute break. And what remains unsaid is, "because I have to pace the hall so that I burn off all this energy because I want to kill that lawyer right now."

[LAUGHTER]

MATT SEPIC: Cahill said judges should not seek outside approval of their decisions, particularly from news coverage and especially social media. The judge said one day he made the mistake of looking at Twitter.

PETER CAHILL: Yikes! It convinced me that Twitter is a cesspool for one thing.

MATT SEPIC: Cahill said being a judge means managing misery every day, and the vicarious trauma of violent cases takes its toll. He said, after the Chauvin trial, Hennepin County Chief Judge Toddrick Barnette sent him home for two weeks. The court offered counseling for all staff and special sessions for staff members of color. Cahill says he's taking another break before overseeing the trial later this month of J. Alexander Kueng and Tou Thao. The two former officers are charged with aiding and abetting Floyd's murder. Matt Sepic, MPR news, Minneapolis.

CATHY WURZER: As Matt mentioned in his story, Minnesota currently does not routinely allow cameras in the courtroom, but the state supreme court is considering changing that. I want to talk a little bit more about the pros and cons of having cameras in the courtroom, so reporter Matt Sepic joins us right now. Hey, thanks for being here.

MATT SEPIC: Hi there. Hi there, Cathy.

CATHY WURZER: That was a very interesting story. Judge Cahill had some very interesting comments to make.

MATT SEPIC: He did. Yeah, and a lot of self-effacing humor about really his own foibles from the bench.

CATHY WURZER: Let's talk about cameras in the courtroom. Now, currently in Minnesota, as you mentioned, cameras are allowed only if all parties at the trial agree to let the cameras in, which is pretty rare.

MATT SEPIC: Yeah, it is rare. I mean, cameras and audio recording aren't entirely banned if you look at the letter of the supreme court's rules. But that consent requirement of both parties and in a criminal trial, that's the prosecution and the defense, they rarely, if ever, consent, and that means cameras and microphones in the courtroom are rare. However, Cathy, since 2015, cameras are generally allowed at sentencing hearings, and the rules are a bit more amenable to allowing cameras at civil case hearings.

CATHY WURZER: Wisconsin, of course, allows cameras in courtrooms for trials. So Minnesota is a bit behind neighboring states on this issue. Who wants to keep camera access limited?

MATT SEPIC: I did a bit of reporting on this last year around the time of the Chauvin trial, and one person I spoke with, who really shed a lot of light on the issue, was retired Hennepin County Judge Kevin Burke. He's a big advocate of having cameras in the courtrooms. And he says the opposition to it really comes down to the fact that a lot of lawyers and judges don't really like reporters and they don't like complex arguments boiled down to just soundbites.

But there are issues, Cathy, about witness intimidation, some very real concerns on the part of both defense attorneys and prosecutors about the reluctance of some people to testify if a camera-- a live TV camera is present. And from the defense point of view, really nobody looks good in an orange jumpsuit on TV. It does not give the public a good impression of a person if they are brought into court in handcuffs wearing an orange jumpsuit because, as our system says, you are innocent until proven guilty.

CATHY WURZER: Right. A few weeks ago, the state supreme court had this hearing on expanding camera access for criminal trials, like we saw in the Chauvin trial. So what's the argument for routinely allowing cameras in?

MATT SEPIC: Well, really it comes down to transparency and access for the public. Courtrooms in Minnesota are fairly small. And certainly, as we saw in the Chauvin case and the Kim Potter trial after that, former Brooklyn Center officer, there weren't really a lot of seats for the general public I believe.

During the Chauvin trial there were only six seats available for the public, and those included the Floyd and Chauvin families. So just not a lot of space. It expands access. And there are arguments that it helps build trust in the process and educates the public about how things work in the real world as opposed to a TV drama from a courtroom.

CATHY WURZER: So there has been a put-- a curse. Gosh, how long have I been around doing this work? Well, a long time. So there's been this question of cameras in the courtroom for a very long time. But there is this push now to allow cameras in courtrooms now. What's the change around this?

MATT SEPIC: Well, this particular debate goes back to around 2009, so a good decade and a half. But really since the televised trials of Derek Chauvin and Kim Potter, news organizations have renewed their call. And you know, MPR News is among the news organizations-- Star Tribune, the TV stations-- asking the court to modify the rules. And they really point to the fact that there were no major problems televising either one of those trials.

And here's a little taste of the arguments from the supreme court last month. Justice Natalie Hudson asked the panel's chair-- this is a panel of judges and lawyers that is offering recommendations. Actually they've recommended no major changes. But the chair of that panel is Ramsey County Judge Richard Kyle Jr. Justice Natalie Hudson asked him last month if their group had uncovered any problems with cameras in other states. And here's what Judge Kyle had to say.

NATALIE HUDSON: Is there a state that you can point to or a case from another state that the committee can point to that would, you know, highlight for us what some of those problems could be in real life? Is there anything we can look to in that regard?

RICHARD KYLE JR: You know, after OJ, I can't-- that went off the rails a bit. I think people-- a lot of the reactions since, people have concerns in terms of the judge, how the lawyers acted, and all the rest. No, I can't give you an example. I can't give you a specific.

MATT SEPIC: And that's going back almost three decades now to the OJ Simpson trial in California. That was judge Richard Kyle of Ramsey County.

CATHY WURZER: You know, I was listening to the arguments too, and Joe Speer-- he's the past president of the Minnesota Society of Professional Journalists-- said, you know, he knows that there's competing interests here, press freedom, privacy, that kind of thing. But you know, I thought it was interesting that he said that the court should consider damage done to the institution of the judiciary by the current lack of transparency.

MATT SEPIC: And that's another argument too, yeah.

CATHY WURZER: Exactly, exactly. Now, do we know when the state supreme court could issue a decision on this issue?

MATT SEPIC: Not sure. They did not set a deadline under my understanding for making a decision on this. And as we've said, this is a debate that's been going on for a very long time in Minnesota.

CATHY WURZER: All right. Matt Sepic, a pleasure. Thank you so much.

MATT SEPIC: Likewise.