Cameras in the jury room fuel capital debate

Two days after his 17th birthday, prosecutors say, Cedric Harrison blasted a man in the chest with a shotgun and stole his car. But in a county that's grown used to a steady stream of death-row prosecutions, the crime and subsequent charge of capital murder garnered little attention - until PBS's "Frontline" was given permission to film the trial, including jury deliberations.

Now, Mr. Harrison's fate is being overshadowed by the clamor of arguments over whether cameras should ever be allowed into jury rooms. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals heard the case last week, and a decision is expected soon.

It would not be the first time that deliberations were filmed: Similar documentaries have been made in Arizona and Wisconsin courts. But this would be the first filming of a death-penalty jury. And that fact is giving the controversial issue a whole new life.

Indeed, the death penalty - and the judicial process leading to it - is under unprecedented attack, highlighted last week when Gov. George Ryan emptied Illinois's death row, saying the sys-tem makes too many mistakes.

That, say some experts, is exactly why cameras should be allowed in jury rooms: to document the process and let the public decide if it's working, in a mass deliberation of its own.

"Houston has been labeled the death-penalty capital of the world," says Ricardo Rodriguez, one of Harrison's lawyers. "The public needs to understand why we are killing so many people."

Since the country was founded, secret jury deliberations have been an accepted, even sacred, part of the judicial process. But many states, like Texas, do not have a specific law that says cameras aren't allowed in.

That's prompted television journalists to pursue the issue. "Frontline," the award-winning documentary series, initially received the go-ahead from Texas District Judge Ted Poe in November, but the prosecution raised concerns during jury selection and appealed his decision.

"We have ... a huge debate over the propriety of putting people to death," said Poe's attorney, Chip Babcock, in last week's arguments. "We are better off as a society if we can see our citizens perform a duty that is literally life and death." But the Harris County District Attorney's Office countered that a camera might corrupt deliberations, inspiring some jurors to "grandstand," or intimidating others.

One appellate judge seemed to agree that cameras would make a mockery of the process. "I fear ... we're going to reduce jury deliberations to reality TV, like 'Survivor,' " said Judge Tom Price.

But the experiment has been tried in other courts. In 1985, PBS filmed jury deliberations in a Wisconsin criminal case and aired them on "Frontline" a year later. In 1996, CBS filmed three Phoenix criminal trials, complete with jury deliberations, for "Enter the Jury Room." And last June, after 18 months of filming in Phoenix, ABC premiered a five-part series called "State v.," with jury-room footage.

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