Media Trials of Alleged Offenders

Media Trials means that the media creates such a frenzy which gives rise to the widespread perception of the defendant’s guilt of a criminal offense because of the sensation caused by the media by releasing prejudiced content much before the evidence is heard. This results in the due process giving way to moral speculation apart from the outcome of the court and in which the general public arrives at a verdict as a matter of public opinion. To earn the best grades in your Dissertation, Thesis and college assignments you should choose an academic writing service that will meet your best writing needs.

Because of this, conflicts arise between the media’s privilege to report on the judicial process via their rights to express their opinions freely. These rights are impinged upon when pre-trial publicity (PTP) compromises upon the holding of a fair trial and instead initiates a trial by the media. For the proper administration of justice, the guilt or innocence of the defendant in the courtroom through a due process of law and not through the media where selected items are released for creating a sensation It is not necessary that pre-trial publicity has a negative impact on the outcome of the trial. Studies were carried out on pre-trial publicity concentrated on murder trials during a 3 year period.

It was found that the greater possibilities of conviction were associated with less rather than excess publicity. Defendants were in fact helped with moderate publicity rather than no publicity at all and defendants were actually convicted the amount of pre-trial publicity actually earned them a longer sentence. However, generally, the results obtained from studying actual trials differed in important ways than the results obtained by research. It has been noticed that defense counsel works much harder in the glare of publicity since it highlights their efforts and will probably attract future clients. But, in essence, publicity by itself is not enough to affect the verdict in most cases.

It is not possible that potential jurors remain completely unaware of the circumstances that surround heinous criminal offenses These crimes that receive a lot of publicity usually result in an atmosphere that is extremely anti-defendant which leads to the contention that at no time before has the judicial system faced challenges to its fairness as in contemporary times because of reporting that is mainly aimed at entertaining rather than just current news.  The main issues that arise by the media’s sensationalism in covering criminal trials are the possibility of appeals. The increased occurrences of PTP have caused a multiple addition of appeals.