No one should have expected that the first court case to claim a huge television audience would center on municipal-bond trading. With a famous name linked to a sordid crime, the rape trial of William Kennedy Smith fits neatly into the usual daytime schedule of leering soap operas. For the same reason, it has turned out to be a test of whether TV cameras will turn the law into a brand of vaudeville. In a case full of senatorial bar hopping and a parlor game called Vegetable, it's already difficult to keep in sight the serious charges -- rape and battery -- at the trial's heart. It doesn't help when expert testimony on the alleged victim's underclothes is interrupted by a commercial for the Home Shopping Network.
Yet as justice collided with the video age last week, the impact of TV in the Smith case was as hard to judge as the defendant's guilt or innocence. The jury, which is sequestered at the close of each day, sees none of the television coverage. But the single inconspicuous camera in the Palm Beach County courthouse sends every word and gesture -- everything, that is, except the face of the alleged victim -- to a jury of millions. During some parts of the testimony by the alleged victim last week, the audience for Cable News Network climbed to nearly 3.2 million viewers, nine times what CNN usually draws those hours.
What those millions are seeing is a civics lesson spiced with scandal. "I think it's a second major dose of consciousness raising for the public about sexual crimes, following Anita Hill's testimony," says Lee Bollinger, dean of the University of Michigan law school. No less important, the daily coverage is a window onto the real conduct of trials. Without the cameras there, says Steven Brill, president of cable TV's Courtroom Television Network, "you would see 'ambush shots' of Smith and his lawyers going into the courthouse. Here you see dignity and solemnity."
To say nothing of monotony. In even the most sensational court cases, cross- examination draws out a story from witnesses in eyedropper doses. Expert testimony tends to be bloodless. The lacy bra admitted into evidence in Smith's trial seems less provocative when the garment is discussed by the "bodily fluids and tissue technician" of the Palm Beach sheriff's department.
< Viewers also learn to appreciate that in courtroom testimony, demeanor and delivery are crucial. Prosecutor Moira Lasch must still be regretting that she called Anne Mercer to the stand. On the night of the alleged incident, Mercer went with Smith's accuser to Au Bar, the tony Palm Beach hangout where they met Smith in the company of his uncle, Senator Edward Kennedy, and Kennedy's son Patrick. Lasch got what she wanted from Mercer: testimony that the alleged victim yelled "rape" early on. The jury may remember her fashion-mag appearance and soulless manner.