Inspired By OJ Simpson Case, Jason Azzopardi Is In Favour Of Livestreaming Major Court Sittings
Did the glove fit? Maybe, maybe not, but the whole world got to see OJ Simpson try it on in front of a jury.
And now PN MP and lawyer Jason Azzopardi has said some of Malta’s major courts should live-stream cases to the general public too.
“Speaking in my private capacity as a lawyer, there are sittings in front of particular courts such as the Constitutional Court or the Court of Criminal appeal deciding appeals from trials by jury, which can certainly lend themselves to being streamed live,” Azzopardi said during a recent interview on Lovin Daily.
He recounted how he used to follow the famous OJ Simpson murder trial when he was a first-year university law student in the 1990s, and said he learned a lot from watching the wheels of justice turn on the small screen.
“Why not? It won’t be just to tag live-streaming to a particular case; what is important is the particular court. Why not have it for trials of jury of a certain gravity with charges of a particular character, but especially the constitutional court? In my opinion, those will definitely lend themselves to being streamed.”
Cameras aren’t allowed inside any Maltese courtroom, limiting the general public to reading reports to understand what’s going on within the four walls of the courtroom.
Retired judge Giovanni Bonello has called for constitutional court cases to be livestreamed while the Labour Party called for technology to be brought to the courts “at every stage of the process” during a recent policy consultation document.
A proposal to broadcast the upcoming trials in relation to the Daphne Caruana Galizia murder case has also been mooted on the PN’s new platform to crowdsource ideas from the public.
Do you think major court cases should be livestreamed?
READ NEXT: Are You Watching The George Floyd Trial? Malta Should Start Live-Streaming Court Too
