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Court rejects 'privacy' as reason to bar cameras

TALLAHASSEE - A proposed rule change that could have severely limited courtroom camera coverage by news media in order to protect privacy rights and confidential material was rejected Thursday by the Florida Supreme Court.

The justices also turned down a proposal to allow judges to ban television and still pictures of jurors' and prospective jurors' faces without holding hearings.

"We're thrilled and see the court's decision as continuing Florida's tradition of public access to our courts," said Carol LoCicero, a lawyer for Cable News Network and five other media companies that include 12 Florida TV stations and newspapers.

The First Amendment Foundation also objected to the rule changes proposed by a Florida Bar committee.

Hillsborough Circuit Judge Claudia Rickert Isom of Plant City, then the Bar committee's chairwoman, argued in favor of the proposals at a June hearing. She was not surprised by Thursday's unanimous decision.

"We knew that those were going to be looked at very closely by the court. . . . There wasn't a lot of ego vested in this," she said.

Judges already have the power to restrict camera coverage to control decorum and make sure proceedings are fair.

Media lawyers argued that letting judges also take privacy and "privileged and confidential matters" into account would close most proceedings to cameras. Cameras are rarely excluded now.

"There's no privacy in a public courtroom," First Amendment Foundation lawyer Jonathan Kaney argued at the June hearing.

Isom said allowing judges to prohibit TV and still pictures of jurors' faces without a hearing would have saved time.

The high court also rejected a proposed rule that would have limited the use of court security cameras to only security purposes.

"That's a public record," said First Amendment Foundation president Barbara Petersen.

She said security tapes can provide a record of misdeeds in courthouses, and it would take an act of the Legislature, not a court rule, to exempt them from public records laws.

Other rulings Thursday:

WORKER'S COMP LAW: A state law requiring workers to provide their Social Security number when claiming compensation for on-the-job injuries is invalid, the court said, because it violates federal privacy rights.

The justices unanimously upheld a 1st District Court of Appeal ruling reinstating benefits for Ricardo Cagnoli of South Florida.

A compensation claims judge denied workers' compensation benefits to Cagnoli because he failed to include his Social Security number on his application.

The Federal Privacy Act, however, makes it illegal for a government agency to deny any benefit to people because they refuse to disclose their Social Security numbers, the appellate court stated.

DEATH ROW APPEALS: Thomas Knight, who has been on Florida's death row for 30 years, lost his latest in a series of appeals, 7-0.

Knight, 54, has two death sentences for the 1974 murders of Sidney and Lillian Gans of Miami Beach in 1974. He received a third one for fatally stabbing prison guard Richard Burke with a sharpened spoon in 1980.

The court also rejected an appeal by death row inmate Ernest Whitfield, 38, who fatally stabbed Claretha Reynolds, a Sarasota mother of five, in 1995.

[Last modified November 4, 2005, 01:40:17]