Better Than ‘Law & Order’? A Seat in a Real-Life Court Room - The Wall Street Journal

Her companion Maryann Hichar, who is 76 and also a retired elementary-school teacher, shook her head in disagreement.

“Speak for yourself!” she said.

The friends weren’t critiquing a new hit show in the theater district but instead were in U.S. District Court in Boston, having just emerged from the latest installment of the trial in the Varsity Blues college-admissions scandal. While others binge-watch Netflix, the retired teachers are part of a cadre of spectators who voluntarily—no summons needed—view real-life trials for fun or to keep more eyes on the justice system.

Trial watching is a longstanding pastime for true-crime fans and armchair legal analysts who prefer the authentic drama of live courtroom action over the likes of “Law & Order” and “The Good Wife.” The curious onlookers have long been a presence at proceedings that gain tabloid notoriety, such as the trials of O.J. Simpson and Jodi Arias. Hearings in the conservatorship of Britney Spears have drawn mobs of followers holding signs and chanting outside the Los Angeles courthouse in support of the pop star.

These days, all kinds of cases can get a watch, from small-claims disputes and bail hearings to a complicated alleged bribery scheme—with no murder, like Varsity Blues.

Theranos Inc. founder Elizabeth Holmes’s criminal fraud trial has attracted fans, critics and curious members of the public to the San Jose, Calif., federal courthouse. Friday, members of a book club joined the early-morning line to secure one of the limited number of public seats. Two neighbors have taken public transit together to the trial most days to follow along; they said neither of their spouses is interested in attending.

Trial watchers have become a broader and more eclectic group, said Alison Triessl, a Los Angeles criminal defense attorney and founder of “Wild About Trial,” a mobile app and website devoted to following criminal trials nationwide. Its Facebook page has 25,000 followers. She now sees many of the amateur legal enthusiasts flocking to lesser-known cases, a development she credits to hits such as the Netflix documentary series “Making a Murderer” and the true-crime podcast “Serial.”

In addition, social-justice movements in recent years have spawned more grass-roots groups of court watchers who see themselves as everyday watchdogs of courtrooms. Court-watch coalitions have sprung up in New York, Los Angeles, Cincinnati and elsewhere. In March, singer-songwriter Fiona Apple went on Instagram to plug Courtwatch PG, a program formed in 2020 to monitor court proceedings in and around Prince George’s County, Md. The performer connected with the group via a friend, said founder Qiana Johnson, and her shout-out drove up the ranks of volunteers, with some saying, “Fiona sent me.”

Criminal trials are generally open to the public, although judges do sometimes restrict access.

Toronto defense attorney Monte MacGregor, who has a private practice but also does homicide cases as a public defender, said trial watchers provide helpful feedback.

“They’ll come up to you during the breaks and say, ‘I just think your client is screwed,’ ” he said.

The 47-year-old attorney said the courtroom spectators have also complimented his cross-examining skills with comments such as, “I like what you did there. You really made that person look like a liar.”

Virtual access to courts during the pandemic gave him a new audience of trial watchers, including his mom, 80-year-old Heather MacGregor.

He was defending a man accused of murdering his wife in a criminal case that was being held via Zoom. Mr. MacGregor encouraged his mother to log in, telling her it would top her favorite TV show, “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.”

“Oh, it was excellent,” said Ms. MacGregor, who watched every day of a trial that lasted several weeks and resulted in her son’s client being found guilty of manslaughter.

Mr. MacGregor said he enjoyed looking at the Zoom gallery and seeing her display name, “Mom’s iPad” among the viewers.

Some serious court watchers take notes during proceedings and make their feedback public. In Geneva, N.Y., volunteer court watchers observe the judges, lawyers and personnel in small-claims court, traffic court, superior court and elsewhere. A report on their website notes the strong points—the judge “listened carefully to all”—and the weak points, like one judge “yawned frequently and audibly,” while another “had a distracting nervous habit, twirling a large rubber band around and around.”

At federal court in Boston, Ms. Hichar and her friend Ms. Fisher, longtime trial watchers, are now regulars on the hard wooden benches of Courtroom 4.

They are following the case of two businessmen accused of bribery-and-fraud conspiracy in an alleged scheme to get their children admitted to the University of Southern California as athletic recruits. More than 45 other defendants have already pleaded guilty. The trial, in which the two defendants are being tried together, is now in its fourth week, and closing arguments are scheduled for Wednesday.

Ms. Fisher likes watching lawyers grill witnesses. “Aha, that’s what he was looking for,” she said she’ll think after an attorney pulls revelatory answers from a person on the stand.

Ms. Hichar praises U.S. District Judge Nathaniel Gorton, who at the outset warned lawyers against “wandering back and forth” in his courtroom.

“I love him. I love him. He doesn’t suffer fools,” Ms. Hichar said.

Things don’t look the same in the pandemic. It’s hard to read the expressions of jurors, who wear masks, and there is no longer a soup-and-salad bar in the court cafeteria. “The cafeteria is like a shell of itself,” lamented Ms. Hichar.

With fewer people than normal attending in-person proceedings in Boston, it’s easier to land a seat in the gallery—although she said that makes her more likely to get noticed by the courtroom security officer for minor infractions of decorum.

“Today I was reprimanded twice,” Ms. Hichar said, after a recent session of Varsity Blues got technical, as an IRS agent testified about one of the defendant’s taxes.

“Once, I was trying to fish in my bag for a lozenge, and it was making noise. Then, this afternoon, I had the Boston Globe and was doing sudoku,” she said, of behavior that caught the attention of the tall security guard trying to limit distractions in the court. “He came over and said I couldn’t be doing sudoku.”

Still, it beats getting her true-crime fix via “48 Hours” or “Dateline” like she had been doing during the pandemic.

“I really missed this,” she said of trial watching with Ms. Fisher. “We are true die-hards, for sure. It is definitely in our blood.”

—Sara Randazzo contributed to this article.

Write to Jennifer Levitz at [email protected]

source: https://www.wsj.com/articles/better-than-law-order-a-seat-in-a-real-life-court-room-11633446753

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