LOS ANGELES COUNTY : Panel Studies Ways to Cut Cost of High-Profile Trials
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A task force charged with studying ways that the county might recover costs associated with the broadcast of high-profile court cases such as the O.J. Simpson trial met for the first time Wednesday but came to no conclusions on whether the media should be charged a fee.
The task force is the brainchild of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, which has been casting about for ways to avoid future expenditures such as the Simpson case, estimated to have cost the county about $2.5 million to date.
It includes representatives from the offices of the district attorney, public defender and county counsel as well as the Sheriff’s Department, courts and media.
But on its first outing the group ran into a thicket of thorny questions over how the county should approach an issue rife with constitutional and public policy implications.
One idea the group mulled, for example, involved having the county install its own video equipment in courts and then sell rights to the live video feeds. However, county building engineers said it could cost the county as much as $400,000 to equip one courtroom.
Presiding Superior Court Judge Gary Klausner has already denied a request from the board to charge the media for costs associated with broadcasting the Simpson trial.
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