There was a time when juries were routinely sequestered to protect them from influence outside the courtroom.  But sequestration is expensive, and so the courts decided to pretend it wasn’t necessary, because nobody would ever tell a juror something they shouldn’t hear, and no juror would disregard the judge’s instruction not to pay attention to outside influence.

Yet J. Michael Flanagan has a concern. In the upcoming trial of Conrad Murray, the doc who personally “oversaw” Michael Jackson’s medical regimen,  Flanagan has requested of Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Michael Pastor that the jury be locked in the cloisters. Why?

A lawyer for Michael Jackson’s personal physician said Wednesday that in light of the uproar surrounding the verdict in the recent Casey Anthony case, jurors in the doctor’s upcoming manslaughter trial should be sequestered round-the-clock, or at least “during the hours Nancy Grace is on TV.”

The attorney for Dr. Conrad Murray told a judge he was concerned that biased commentary of the televised proceedings, set to begin Sept. 8, would affect the panel’s ability to render a fair verdict in the Jackson’s death.

Whether Nancy Grace has invented some insipid yet derogatory name for Dr. Murray is unknown, but that her ignorant yet virulent spewing of such lawyer-like gems as, “where there’s smoke, there’s fire,” might undermine the potential for a thoughtful verdict. 

The judge’s reaction was curious:

The judge said the defense was free to file a formal motion for sequestration, but that he did not feel it was necessary and that in any case, the financially strapped court system could not afford it.

Pastor, who said the O.J. Simpson case was the last time a county judge had sequestered a jury, said he would order jurors be kept away from the general public inside the courthouse but believed it “unhealthy” for panelists to be isolated for the entire trial, which is expected to last six weeks.

Sure it’s costly.  Sure, jurors hate sequestration.  But reference to the last time it happened, the O.J. trial, reminds us of why it serves a larger purpose.  While lawyers are uniformly disgusted by that fact that the media puts people like Nancy Grace on air to poison the minds of anyone who hears her, it’s clear that someone out there thinks she’s the ginchiest.  In fact, there are a great many who think that people who spew ignorant vitriol speak the truth.

There was a reason why the O.J. jury was sequestered, as there was no doubt that the case would generate massive media coverage, and that there would be a coterie of lawyers dying to handicap the trial.  After all, trying to make trials into sporting events makes for great television ratings.  The only thing lacking is enough trials that anyone cares about to keep a cable network in business.

This trial, however, is likely to get the star treatment.  The death of Michael Jackson was huge, and the trial of his doctor will endure the intense focus of an O.J.  Or a Casey Anthony.

We can’t stop networks from giving air time to people like Nancy Grace.  We can’t stop people like Nancy Grace from doing everything in their power to make people stupider for having heard their shrill voice.  That’s the nature of a free press, and the Constitution doesn’t command it be limited to people who enlighten rather than disgust.

But the court can prevent the jurors from hearing, whether directly or second hand, the things that make a fair trial impossible.  As the air fills with noise, almost all of which will conflict with the jurors’ duty to render a verdict solely on the evidence admitted in court, and to follow the instructions of the judge rather than the rantings of pundits of dubious merit, the minds of jurors rot. 

The phrase we use, that the bell once rung cannot be unrung, remains as important as ever.  Once a juror hears the outrageous, ridiculous, utterly wrong nonsense that is used to fill the air time between commercials, they can’t get it out of their heads.  Whether it influences them is never clear, but the potential for influence is omnipresent.  They should not be influenced, at all, by this outside noise.

Nancy Grace has become the poster girl for a diseased view of the law in this country.  She’s not the only TV lawyer selling nonsense to the public, and she’s not the only voice from which the jury needs to be protected.  She’s just one of the loudest and most awful.  And she has made a career of doing everything in her power to screw with the public’s understanding of the legal system.

It would be nice if the defendant could be assured that jurors wouldn’t be influenced by this media parlor trick, but he can’t.  He’s entitled to a fair trial, and Grace and her ilk are dedicated to making sure he doesn’t get one.  This may be a very sad reflection of the world today, and the manner in which high profile criminal trials have to be conducted for as long as there are networks happy to sacrifice propriety in the name of ratings, or lawyers who want to make their bones by leading the townfolk with torches and pitchforks, but that’s where we are.

Sorry that it’s going to cost Los Angeles County a boatload of money to assure that Conrad Murray gets a trial untainted by the likes of Nancy Grace, but as long as we’re a society that watches this shrew, there is no other choice. 

H/T Bad Lawyer