Silent films - back to McHenry County?

Today's editorial in the Northwest Herald was titled "Courtroom transparency" and its topic was media recording in the courtroom. It's coming in Illinois.

Could this happen in McHenry County? Would it be interesting, if it did?

Certainly, MCC ought to begin offering courses in lip-reading. Unless the media employ use of super-secret, highly-sensitive microphones, the cameras will record only lips moving, heads nodding and arms waving. The 6:00PM news won't be very interesting without sound.

But perhaps the media will be able to persuade the judges to allow amplification of court proceedings inside the courtroom.

I've been in a courtroom when even the judge could not hear what an attorney was saying. I watched the judge lean farther and farther over his desk toward the attorney, and finally he said, "You are going to have to speak up."

On another day, a Woodstock attorney was seated at the attorney's table, and he suddenly said in a loud voice, "Can't hear!" He wasn't part of the case being heard, but he stepped forward to the bench and was allowed to remain there.

I suppose if I stood up and said, "Can't hear", I'd be quickly escorted from the courtroom, probably after being warned by the judge that I'd be held in contempt if I continued to be disruptive in his courtroom.

I believe it will take a court case (oh, there go the County dollars) to get McHenry County Circuit Court judges to order attorneys and other parties to speak up, and to speak up themselves. If all would just speak in normal tones of voice, court proceedings could be heard.

It would also help if bailiffs would quiet attorneys who stand by the tables and talk during court and those seated behind the railing who talk during court. It ought to be so quiet that, in the words of one woman who referred to the principal's control in a small elementary school in the South, "You could hear cotton drop."