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April 23, 2009
NOTE TO MEDIA PERSONNEL FROM THE PRESIDING JUDGE
REGARDING COURTROOM SEATING
Thank you for working with our under resourced court as we attempt to provide access to you and the general public to the proceedings in this case. As you know, we have limited seating capacity in our courtrooms. Consequently, we do not have seats for everyone who might desire to watch the proceedings. While we allowed all of the media into the courtroom for the initial hearing on this case, we were informed that approximately 30 members of the public were turned away. The general public has a right to attend our public proceedings as long as there is space to accommodate them. We cannot arbitrarily give priority to the media.
We have discussed a number of options, all of which involve limiting the number of seats available to the media so that there will be more seats available to the general public. One option was to require all media to participate in a drawing for the available media seats. We decided against that option because our local media might be excluded if their ticket is not drawn. While we fully believe the court has an obligation to allow media access to public proceedings so that they can report to the various communities around the country, we feel our primary obligation is to the people who live in our community. Accordingly, to advance that interest, we believe we should give priority to the local media who cover our courts day to day and who report to the San Joaquin County community. To be fair to all other media agencies, a drawing will be conducted so that those agencies will have an equal chance to obtain a seat.
This is the decision made for the proceedings of Friday, April 24, 2009 and the underlying reasoning for that decision. Requests for a special accommodation for the hearing on Friday will not be granted. Thank you for understanding our limitations and continuing to work with us as we handle this case in the future.
Sincerely,
WILLIAM J. MURRAY, JR.
Presiding Judge
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