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East Lansing, Michigan
Dear Judge Zobel: Learn the Difference Between Broadcasting and Narrowcasting

By Richard Wiggins

ear Judge Zobel: What on Earth possessed you to do it? Your decision seems to be a crass attempt to endear yourself to the public. Don't you realize you're reacting to the media spotlight you find yourself under? It defies common sense and simple logic. And your decision didn't seem to accomplish the apparent goal. Why would you pull a public relations stunt like that?

This beginning of a letter to the judge may sound as if I'm criticizing Judge Hiller B. Zobel for his decision this past Monday to reduce Louise Woodward's conviction to manslaughter, or his other decision, to set her sentence to the time served while she awaited trial. As a matter of fact, I do personally find the second-guessing of the jury to be questionable at best, and the punishment meted out to be a virtual slap on the wrist. If this young au pair had been an impoverished American mother living in a Boston slum, instead of a British subject with a pubful of supporters whose emotional pleas have been televised worldwide, no doubt she'd rot in prison for 20 years. American courts seem blind to the fact that their decisions are inevitably distorted by the glare of television lights.

But this column is about the Internet, so we won't concern ourselves with the merits of Judge Zobel's legal decisions. Instead, let's talk the other decision the judge made: his celebrated announcement that the decision would be delivered over the Internet instead the old fashioned way -- you know, with the judge reading his decision in court, and the clerk handing out paper copies of the rulings.

A Reuters piece written by Leslie Gevirtz with a dateline of November 5 explained the judge's rationale: Middlesex County Superior Court Judge Hiller Zobel feared pandemonium in the court clerk's office as reporters scrambled to get his ruling on whether to overrule a jury's second-degree murder verdict against 19-year-old Louise Woodward. Alas, the best laid plans of mice and men go astray. A different kind of pandemonium would strike.