A Day In The Life Of The Moussaoui Trial -- Part 1 of 2

You'll find a litany of information about how things went during the first day of Zacarias Moussaoui's sentencing trial from all kinds of news outlets today, but Public Eye got a chance to experience what it was like to cover the story. Below is my first installment of what the scene was like yesterday. Later, I'll post on what it was like to watch the defendant on a closed circuit television during the trial (as I sat just a few feet from his mother) and I'll take a closer look at what it was like for CBS's team covering the first day of a trial that has a long road ahead.

The beginning of what may well be the only trial directly related to 9/11 was big news yesterday -- final jury selection, opening statements and the first witness in the sentencing trial of Zacarias Moussoaui. Was it the jumbo media circus (a la the Michael Jackson trial) that I expected? Not exactly. But it was obvious that something big was going on. As I made my way to the courthouse at around 8:30 yesterday morning, there were satellite trucks lined up along a nearby street and a bevy of cameras set up in the press area. I handed my press credentials to a U.S. Marshall (who was carrying a substantial firearm) and headed in.

Basically, the media is parked about 30 feet away from the front of the courthouse behind an orange barricade. (The press area is highlighted in green in this picture.) The judge has issued several "trial conduct orders" to inform the media of where they can operate both in and around the courthouse – for example, this order details "that no member of the media is permitted to conduct interviews or otherwise operate between the courthouse and the area on Courthouse Square marked by police barricades." (You can read the other trial conduct orders here and here.)

In the center of the group is the pool camera – since several networks are all using essentially the same footage, they rotate who operates the pool camera each day and everyone shares the footage. (The pool for the trial consists of five networks, ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox News and CNN.) Cameras from networks that aren't members of the pool - mostly foreign outlets and networks' own cameras for shooting stand-ups - are set up alongside each other in a long line along the barricade. Some have little tents set up, there are a ton of lights and everyone is freezing (well, I was.) There is also a bank of microphones set up in the front of the barricade, in case lawyers or family members want to make statements throughout the day in front of the media gaggle.

Out here, it's really a waiting game. And frankly, there isn't a whole lot to shoot. Moussaoui enters the courthouse from an entrance that isn't visible to the media and so do the lawyers. As is the case in more and more high-profile trials,* jury members are anonymous and can't be identified or interviewed at any time during the trial (there's some more detail about this in one of the trial conduct orders.)

U.S. marshals patrol around the area and check media credentials before letting anyone into the press area. Bomb sniffing dogs walk around the courthouse and two sharpshooters sit atop a building nearby. One producer from France 3 television, Eric Jeannet was frustrated with the amount of security around the courthouse, which he described as being "like a bunker." And with no shots of Moussaoui or the lawyers entering the building, he didn't have much to shoot so far that morning.

For Tilman Lingner, a Swiss television producer, the security measures were frustrating, but typical. Such heightened security was part of what he described as an overall tendency toward "panic reactions" following 9/11 that tended to "complicate everything" for the media.

Gerald Martineau, a photographer for the Washington Post who's been covering news events like this for the Post since Watergate, didn't seem to mind the added security. "It's restrictive, but it's that way for a purpose," he said. "I would have liked to be closer to the courthouse, but that's why they invented telephoto lenses."

Stratis Zervos, a freelance cameraman who was working with Lingner and has covered several high-profile trials, described the media access situation as "pretty standard" for a trial that generated this level of media attention. The press is usually "pinned into one area," and their movements are restricted, he said.

Chris Greenburg, a photographer from Bloomberg News, who had recently covered I. Lewis Libby's hearings said that access for the media at that event was much more open -- photographers were allowed to operate much closer to the courthouse. There were three entrances from which major players could be approached and photographed up close, "so all the wires had a cameraman at each door," said Greenburg.

Of course, that trial was very different from Moussaoui's.

"Federal trials always have heightened security," said CBS News legal analyst Andrew Cohen, who was there to cover the trial. "And this is a terror trial. The government wants to create a sense that this is the safest, most secure proceeding we're going to see."

"Security is a nuisance," he added, but the Moussaoui trial "is really the first high-profile terror trial since 9/11," and Moussaoui "is not a regular criminal defendant." So the rules are essentially being "made up as we go along," he said.

Because of those realities, "we can't really compare it to other trials," he said.

To be continued...

*Editor's Note: This sentence originally stated that "Like most trials, jury members are anonymous… ." It has come to our attention that jury members are not anonymous in most trials overall, but anonymous juries are becoming more and more popular with judges in high-profile cases such as this one.