What happened to courts drama?

03-06-2009 | DAVID YOUNG OUR MAN IN PANAMA

ourman@laestrella.com.pa

Lots of coverage of the crime but little of the trial.. and a look back to some sombre events

Panama Star Do Panamanian courts lack drama? The question came to mind following the recent trial of a man found guilty of a horrendous crime at a Deli Gourmet store that I frequently visit. Two young women, one of them pregnant, were working as replacements for vacationing staff when a group of bandits working in conjunction with a security guard entered the store at closing time and stole $3,000. They then drove to Corredor Sur, and after a cell phone conversation, one of the men shot and killed the girls in cold blood. Then they drove away to share the loot.

The story was widely aired at the time, but when the trigger man was tried and convicted of murder, the case was barely covered. It certainly didn’t get the front page headlines of the original event. When “justice has to be seen to be done” why is so little attention paid to the penultimate dénouement (the ultimate being the sentence)?

In Panama it can take years for a criminal case to appear before the courts, but when it does, aren’t we interested in the results, or is it like the corruption headlines that we read daily. Once the story leaves the front page it’s quietly forgotten, which helps ensure continuation of the cycle.

It puzzles me because as a young reporter on a weekly newspaper, one of my first regular assignments was attending the local magistrates’ court, to watch sentences being handed out for crimes like riding a bicycle without lights, soliciting, being drunk and disorderly, right up to theft or assault. The cases filled at least a page every week and when the more serious cases went to trial, a more senior reporter was sent to cover the event and the sentencing. The attendant publicity was often a major disincentive for the less hardened law breakers.

One Sunday newspaper in Britain reached a circulation of eight million, based on it’s coverage of the more salacious cases sent in by correspondents across the country.

Now the real life drama in the court rooms is not quite like the TV and movie representations of crusading lawyers or get-his-man prosecutors. The rapid fire questions and rapid breakdown of witnesses, and the on-stage flourishes of the interrogators are largely absent, and if they do surface are likely to draw comment from the presiding judge. But the discerning court reporter who sits through hours of testimony, equivocations, and half truths, is able to produce a human interest narrative that can make fascinating reading.

Nowadays in other jurisdictions, when the trial is important enough, TV cameras appear in the court room and every boring detail is shown live. No practiced court reporter to weed out the long tedious line of questioning that will ultimately win or lose a case. Perhaps the most celebrated of these was the O.J. Simpson murder trial which millions watched for days, with its dramatic final “Not Guilty” decision by the jury.

While I did not follow a career devoted to trials, years after my initial blooding covering minor infringements, I was sent to provide “color background” to a memorable jury decision and sentencing. A husband and wife were being tried in Manchester, England for the murder of some elderly women, who had been killed with rat poison after making out their wills to their nurse (the wife). Their deaths were excruciating and the original arrests and the case through the lower courts right through to the jury trial had garnered headlines for months.

I was sent as back up to a much older crime reporter who had served as a WWII bomber pilot and was inured to over involvement in the stories he covered. But today was to be different for both of us and the judge. The woman was found “guilty”, the husband, in spite of a dissolute record walked free. The judge prepared to read the death sentence, and here the drama intensified. He took out a small black patch of cloth and placed it on his head before he read the statutory “hang by the neck until you are dead” sentence. Everyone in the silent room looked at the short, stocky, middle aged woman suddenly like the nice old lady next door, everybody’s grandmother. The judge’s voice shook a little as he spoke. It was his first murder trial. My mouth was dry as I made notes. I looked at my case hardened senior, and he had gone pale.

Weeks later, I had the melancholy task of driving to Strangeway’s prison where an anti-capital punishment crowd had gathered alongside men carrying “Prepare to meet thy doom” signs as they handed out invitations to a revival meeting.

A little after 8 o´clock, a prison official came out and hung the notice confirming that the little old lady had been hanged at eight. She was the second last woman to be hanged in Britain, before capital punishment was abolished.