Prop 8 news: Suit calls for full
release of Prop 8 Trial video
The American Foundation for Equal Rights, the organization
fighting to overturn the anti-gay Proposition 8 in California, filed a motion
Friday asking for the “full and unedited” release of the trial footage. The action
is in response to the pro-Prop 8 side filing a motion to sanction Judge Vaughn
Walker after he showed a clip from the footage at a gathering. AFER attorney Theodore J. Boutrous Jr. said, “Why should
the public be denied the opportunity to see and hear what happened in a public
trial, in a public courtroom, in a case involving the constitutional rights of
millions of people?” Boutrous added, “The Proponents of Prop. 8 have repeatedly
attempted to obscure and distort the facts of this trial because they simply
have no case and they seem desperately anxious to prevent the American public
from seeing the facts for themselves.” Below are excerpts from AFER’s brief, which can be read in
full here: http://www.afer.org/legal-filings/plaintiffs-motion-to-release-the-video-record-from-trial/ “Proponents’ fierce determination to shield access by any
member of the American public to the actual compelling evidence which
demonstrated the unconstitutionality of Proposition 8 and the paucity of
evidence that Proponents presented in its defense directly conflicts with this
Nation’s constitutional commitment to public and open judicial process and
serves no legitimate public end.” … “Although Proponents expended tens of millions of dollars
on a public campaign to restore discrimination in California that the state
Supreme Court had struck down, they now seek to prevent the public from ever
observing first-hand their efforts in a public courtroom to defend that
discrimination and the exposure of those efforts to the acid test of
cross-examination in open court. The present motion is their latest attempt to
prevent the public from witnessing that trial.” … “Proponents have not remotely overcome the exacting burdens
imposed by the First Amendment and the common law as prerequisites for throwing
a blanket over a true, accurate and unedited record of a widely publicized
public trial of an exceedingly important constitutional issue affecting
millions of Americans.”