Massachusetts electronic access in courts rule is in the “forefront” of state courts, SJC Public Information Officer Joan Kenney said to me this past February. The state has a history of progressive thinking when it comes to technology use in courtrooms, Neil Ungerleider has said. The state was one of the first to adopt a rule allowing use of cameras – the original Rule 1:19 made it on the books in the 1980s. While most other state courts do allow camera usage, many do not permit use of electronic devices for reporting.

“It’s easy for reporters who work in this state to forget that the access that they have is really unique and that while some states have cameras, this may be one of the few of only states that allow the use of the electronic devices,” Ungerleider said.

Meanwhile, lawyer and blogger Robert Ambrogi, who researched equivalent or similar technological access rules of other state judiciaries while on the Rule 1:19 Subcommittee, found that most states do not extend to the lengths the new Massachusetts rule does. Massachusetts is one of the few states that allow two video cameras in a courtroom at a time, and one of the few that specifically grants that permission to citizen journalists in the language of the court rule.

Massachusetts is ahead of the federal courts in terms of electronic access. Federal courts do not allow the use of cameras except in specific federal district courts that are part of a pilot program similar to OpenCourt’s project in Quincy District Court. Cameras have never been allowed in the U.S. Supreme Court.

“The federal court system is woefully behind the times in terms of allowing cameras in the courtrooms,” Ambrogi said. “We’re still guided by a U.S. Supreme Court that has said not over their dead bodies will they ever let cameras in the Supreme Court. So I think Massachusetts is ahead on this.”

Other state judiciaries’ rules on cameras in courtrooms vary widely. For example, Oklahoma, which previously banned cameras in its courtrooms in its Code of Judicial Conduct, superseded the relevant rule in April 2011. That state now has no formal rules on the books at all regarding camera usage in courtrooms.

On the opposite end of the spectrum is Wisconsin, which permits three television and three still camera operators to be in courts with approval from the judge. Mississippi is also highly permissive when it comes to camera use in state courts; individual use of one television camera, one video recorder, one audio recording system and one still camera is permitted in the same courtroom given at least two days notice to the presiding judge.

Only a few states explicitly permit use of electronic devices, and even then, intended use of the device, whether for note taking or reporting, makes a difference in the permissibility of its use. Reporters in Nevada, for example, can freely use electronic devices for note taking, but need to get judge approval before using those same devices to live blog or broadcast court proceedings. In other states, reporters’ use of electronic devices is limited to cameras and audio recorders used for note taking.

Thirty-five states explicitly permit use of cameras in courtrooms, while 14 other states partially allow camera use depending upon the circumstances. In the majority of states that explicitly permit camera usage, only one videographer and one photographer can be in the courtroom at any time. (For more specifics, see the Radio Television Digital News Association’s State-by-State Guide).

The District of Columbia is the lone region of the United States that outright bans camera usage in the courtrooms in its jurisdiction. Thirty-five states allow some form of audio or video webcast from the court as well, though those 35 states are not all the same 35 that explicitly permit use of cameras; some states that only allow camera use in specific circumstances have also allowed webcasts under special circumstances.

While Joan Kenney, the SJC’s public information officer, has said that Rule 1:19 is still a “work in progress,” Massachusetts is leaps and bounds ahead of other states and sets a strong example of how a state judiciary might handle electronic access to the courtroom. Considering the successes of the OpenCourt project in particular while it lasted, regular live streaming and blogging, citizen journalism reporting and camera usage in courtrooms can become the norm of courtrooms in Massachusetts.

“It [OpenCourt] was a pilot project scheduled to last for a particular period of time, and intended to explore different issues that came up in the context of introducing full-time video recording into courtrooms,” said Jeff Hermes, director of the Digital Media Law Project. “In that regard, I think it was a tremendous success,”

While Massachusetts might lag behind some states in terms of access to the courts, the new updates to Rule 1:19 have ultimately been a victory for Massachusetts press freedom.

“I think the SJC, that court, started to come to the realization that the rules on technology in the courts were outmoded if not even nonexistent for the most part,” said Ambrogi of the Rule 1:19 updates. “I think this was seen as an opportunity to modernize the rules to apply to the kind of technology that reporters are using today. I think it’s also an attempt to recognize that even the definition of a reporter is changing and to acknowledge the idea that … bloggers and citizen journalists can also be members of the news media as well.”