Letter: TV times

THE TV coverage of the courtroom sentencing of the convicted murderer of Suzanne Pilley at the High Court in Edinburgh (your report, 19 April) potentially sets a risk-fraught precedent.

Either we have trial by jury of 12 to 15 persons or by uncountable numbers comprising TV viewers.

Either criminal trials are solemn occasions, as their very detail tells, or they become titillation material for TV ratings that has nothing to do with what we traditionally regard as the process of justice.

The humiliation factor, the sadism, the ogling and voyeurism built in to this risks turning court rooms into Roman coliseums. This first exposure would suggest an experiment presaging full trial exposure, as in the US.

As we shouldn’t follow the US in many of its practices we definitely shouldn’t follow it in this.

There is also the salient truth that accused persons are frequently found innocent and their exposure in the context of a courtroom trial can put them in a framework of accusation for the rest of their lives – not a fair future for any innocent person.

Ian Johnstone

Forman Drive

Peterhead