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OXNARD PUBLISHING COMPANY v. CLINGER
OXNARD PUBLISHING COMPANY, a California corporation et al., Petitioners, v. SUPERIOR COURT OF VENTURA COUNTY, Respondent; William Anthony CLINGER, Real Party in Interest.
Decided: April 23, 1968
Michael F. Dillon, Los Angeles, for petitioners. Herbert L. Ashby, County Counsel, Edwin M. Osborne, Chief Asst. County Counsel, for respondent. Richard E. Erwin, Public Defender, Kenneth Cleaver, Asst. Public Defender, Harkjoon Paik, Deputy Public Defender, for real party in interest.
Petition for writ of mandate to the Superior Court in Ventura County to vacate its order excluding the public and the press from certain sessions of a criminal trial. Petitioners are the corporate publisher of a newspaper in Ventura County and one of its editors.
On 25 January 1968, the case of People v. William Anthony Clinger came before the court for trial by jury. The defendant was charged with the murder and robbery of a bartender named Veryl Robert Hays, at the Admiral's Table bar on 10 May 1967.
Before the selection of a jury, the judge in closed session in chambers, on motion of the public defender and over the opposition of the district attorney, entered an order excluding the public from all portions of the trial taking place outside the presence of the jury. The judge ordered that a record of these closed proceedings be made available to the public at the conclusion of the trial.
Also in closed session in chambers, on motion of the public defender, the judge ordered all possible witnesses in the case not to discuss the case or their proposed testimony with any other witnesses. So far as the record discloses this order was apparently made known only to counsel in the case. In the same closed session in chambers, again over the objection of the district attorney, the judge ordered all parties, lawyers, agents, court officers, and attaches not to make any extrajudicial statements during the course of the trial for dissemination by any means of public communication. The judge observed that although he had seen no indication of any violation of professional conduct by counsel, he saw no harm in making this order. He also said he had seen no indication that the case was a problem in terms of news dissemination, and he declared that nothing he had come in contact with suggested any inflammatory coverage by the newspapers. The judge also expressed the view that the right to a public trial accrued to the parties, who could if they wished, exclude the public from attending the trial. Prior to the issue of these orders, no showing had been made by affidavit, deposition, representation of counsel, or otherwise, of any fact which would indicate any specific necessity for their entry.
The case was then called for trial in open court, and four days were spent in the selection of a jury.
On 1 February, after the jury had been sworn and before any other proceedings, the public defender in closed session in chambers moved for an order prohibiting the district attorney in his opening statement from making any reference to the testimony of any prospective witness present at an identification lineup. The public defender also moved to suppress evidence of the lineup and to prohibit the receipt of identification testimony from any prospective witness who had been present at the lineup. These motions were based on the failure of the accused to waive his right to counsel at the lineup. Thereafter for the next twelve court days the court received evidence relating to these motions in closed session with the public excluded. In closed session the court heard testimony of over 30 fact witnesses, visited the scene of the crime, the Admiral's Table bar, and heard expert testimony on perception and memory from psychiatrists for the defense and for the prosecution.
On 19 February the court in closed session issued an order suppressing the identification testimony of four prospective witnesses who had been present at the lineup, and prohibiting them from identifying the defendant in court.
On 8 February, while these proceedings were taking place, the public defender in closed session moved for an order prohibiting the district attorney from mentioning the witness Dorothy Casto in his opening statement. Mrs. Casto had been living with the accused at the time of the murder, and the motion was based on an expectation that if Mrs. Casto were called as a witness, she would claim her privilege against self-incrimination. On 15 February the public defender in closed session moved for an order prohibiting the district attorney in his opening statement from mentioning any statements made by Mrs. Casto to certain individuals, and prohibiting him from making any reference to color photographs of the victim Hays. These latter motions were subsequently denied by the court, except for the motion relating to color photographs, which appears to have been granted.
On 20 February, some 26 days after the beginning of the trial, the district attorney made his opening statement to the jury, and for the first time witnesses testified in open court. During that session the public defender initiated a practice of making his objections to the admission of evidence at the bench outside the hearing of the jury, but on the protest of the district attorney this practice was discontinued. The trial proceeded for six days, mostly, but not entirely, in open court. For example, the witness Gabriel was questioned in closed session in chambers to determine whether in fact he had been convicted of a felony for which he could be impeached.
On 29 February in closed session in chambers the court entertained a motion of the public defender to prohibit the interrogation in open court of Dorothy Casto as a witness. Present were counsel in the case and counsel for Mrs. Casto. The court ordered that questioning of Mrs. Casto as a witness take place in closed session in chambers. For the balance of that day and on the following day the trial proceeded in open court. But on 4 March Mrs. Casto was called as a witness in closed session. She refused to be sworn. After the court ordered her sworn she persisted in her refusal, and the court found her in contempt. Her request for a public hearing on the finding of contempt was denied, and she was committed to imprisonment in the Ventura County jail until she should comply with the order to be sworn as a witness.
On 5 March the trial resumed in open court.
On 7 March in closed session in chambers the public defender stated that a newspaper article had reported the jailing of Mrs. Casto, that this report seriously jeopardized the defendant's posture in the case. The public defender suggested that someone was in contempt of court and requested that the author of the newspaper report be examined under oath in order to determine the identity of his informant; that the informant then be found in contempt; that each juror be polled on whether he or she had read the newspaper report; that if any juror had read the report the court declare a mistrial. In reply to this the district attorney directed the court's attention to section 1070 of the Evidence Code—the privilege of newsmen not to disclose their sources of information. He also stated that the author of the newspaper article had asked him if Mrs. Casto were under arrest and that he had replied he could not discuss the matter. The court declared a recess. Following the recess, proceedings were again resumed in closed session, and the public defender requested the court to take appropriate action against the district attorney for having conversed with a reporter in violation of the court's order of 25 January. The judge stated that during the recess he had talked informally with the author of the newspaper article and been told that the latter had obtained his information about Mrs. Casto's commitment from the county jail. The judge declared he was satisfied the district attorney was not in contempt. Thereafter in open court the jurors were asked whether they had seen the newspaper article or heard anything about it. Those who gave an affirmative answer were then individually interrogated in closed session in chambers on what they had read and the impression it had made upon them. At a later closed session of court the judge denied defendant's motion for a mistrial.
On 8 March in further closed session Mrs. Casto again refused to be sworn as a witness. The court asked her to waive her right to a public trial for contempt, but this she refused to do. She was remanded to the county jail.
On 11 March for part of the day the trial proceeded in open court and for part of the day there was a further closed session in chambers in the presence of counsel, Mrs. Casto, and her lawyer. Mrs. Casto still refused to be sworn as a witness and was again remanded to custody.
On 13 March Mrs. Casto indicated her willingness to be sworn as a witness, and she was so sworn in closed session in chambers. She then refused to answer questions put to her on the ground of self-incrimination. The district attorney then moved for a hearing under the immunity provisions of Penal Code, section 1324. Mrs. Casto demanded that the hearing be public. The public defender asserted she was not entitled to a public hearing, that such was the sole right of his client. The court agreed with the public defender and denied her request for a public hearing. A closed hearing was immediately held, and the court then issued an order requiring Mrs. Casto to answer the questions, in effect tendering her the immunity authorized by the statute.
This brings us to 14 March, the date on which the alternative writ was heard in this court. From the calling of the case for trial on 25 January to the date of the hearing on the writ, 15 days of proceedings were held in closed session with the public excluded, and 15 days were held in open court, or partially open court. Up to this time over half the trial appears to have taken place in camera.1
Petitioners contend that a public trial commences with the impanelment of a jury and continues through the return of the verdict; that the public has a right to attend a public trial and scrutinize the administration of justice; that the trial court abused its discretion in making a blanket order excluding the public from sessions held outside the presence of the jury; and that this court should issue its writ of mandate to correct arbitrary action and compel the trial court to exercise its discretion in a lawful manner.
Respondent court admits the making of the order, but it asserts that the proceedings from which the public and the press were excluded included hearings on motions to suppress evidence, hearings which were closed to prevent prejudicial matters coming to the attention of the jury.
The public defender, on behalf of his client, declares that in a criminal prosecution the right to a public trial lies with the accused, that the latter may waive his right to a public trial, and if he does the court may exclude the public and the press from that part of the trial which takes place outside the presence of the jury. He cites the Reardon Report of the American Bar Association, Standards Relating to Fair Trial and Free Press, and quotes the opinion in Sheppard v. Maxwell, 384 U.S. 333, 362, 86 S.Ct. 1507, 1522, 16L.Ed.2d 600: 'Given the pervasiveness of modern communications and the difficulty of effacing prejudicial publicity from the minds of the jurors, the trial courts must take strong measures to ensure that the balance is never weighed against the accused.' At the hearing on the return of the writ in this court the public defender conceded that his motions to suppress evidence could have been made in advance of the trial but said that he delayed his motions until after the trial had started and his client been placed in jeopardy, so that the prosecution could not thereafter buttress its case by finding new evidence to replace the evidence which he hoped would be suppressed.
Standing of Petitioners
As representatives of the press petitioners have no special standing to apply for a writ of mandate. Their privilege to attend court proceedings is neither greater nor lesser than that of members of the general public, for their status derives from the rights of the general public for whom they merely act as surrogate and as witness to what the general public could itself witness were it able to be present. But petitioners have no need for special standing, because as members of the general public they have a legal right to seek access to a criminal trial. (Kirstowsky v. Superior Court, etc., 143 Cal.App.2d 745, 300 P.2d 163; Wrather-Alvarez etc., Inc. v. Hewicker, 147 Cal.App.2d 509, 305 P.2d 236.) The proceeding involved is clearly a trial and not a preliminary motion, for on the empanelment and swearing of a jury the trial starts. (Jackson v. Superior Court, etc., 10 Cal.2d 350, 74 P.2d 243.)
The key issue in the case is that of public trial, and the issue of free press is only indirectly and collaterally involved. As the court said in Kirstowsky, supra, 'If the court had the right to exclude the public during the time defendant was upon the witness stand it had the right also to exclude the members of the press. The freedom of the press is in no way involved in this proceeding.' (143 Cal.App.2d pp. 754–755, 300 P.2d p. 169.)
Public Trial—Whose Right?
No tradition is more fundamental in our law than that of public trial. But from time to time we need to remind ourselves of fundamentals. We start with some historical observations about public trial at common law.
Sir Matthew Hale: '* * * the evidence on either part, is given * * * in the open court, and in the presence of the parties, their attornies, counsel, and all bystanders, and before the judge and jury: where each party has liberty of excepting, either to the competency of the evidence, or the competency or credit of the witnesses; which exceptions are publicly stated, and by the judges openly and publicly allowed or disallowed;—wherein if the judge be partial, his partiality and injustice will be evident to all by-standers.' (Hale, History of the Common Law of England, Sixth Ed. (1820), pp. 342–344.)
Sir William Blackstone: 'This open examination of witnesses viva voce, in the presence of all mankind, is much more conducive to the clearing up of truth, than the private and secret examination taken down in writing before an officer, or his clerk, in the ecclesiastical courts, and all others that have borrowed their practice from the civil law * * *.' (III Blackstone's Commentaries, p. 372.)
Henry Hallam: 'Civil liberty, in this kingdom, has two direct guarantees; the open administration of justice, according to known laws truly interpreted, and fair constructions of evidence; and the right of parliament, without let or interruption, to inquire into, and obtain the redress of, public grievances. Of these, the first is by far the most indispensable; nor can the subjects of any state be reckoned to enjoy a real freedom, where the condition is not found both in its judicial institutions and in their constant exercise.' (I Hallam, The Constitutional History of England (8th ed. 1867), pp. 230–231.)
In Jenks, The Book of English Law, we find public trial heading the list of general principles of English justice: '1. It is one of the most conspicuous features of English justice, that all judicial trials are held in open court, to which the public have free access, and that the parties have a right to be represented, and to have their interests defended, by skilled advisers from among the barristers and solicitors described in the preceding chapter.
'This feature is so much of a common-place to the modern Englishman, that he hardly realizes its importance. But, if he will think for a moment, of the difference between the English system and those, quite common in other countries, where the proceedings are conducted in secret, and where, in criminal cases, the accused is not necessarily entitled to be represented by skilled advisers, he will hardly fail to grasp the difference. To put it shortly, the English system ensures that the enormous force of public opinion is brought to bear on the proceedings in court, and that judge and jury are compelled to hear both sides of the case. The former appears to have been the rule in England from time immemorial; and much of the effectiveness of English public opinion, whether expressed by word of mouth or in the Press, may be said to be due to it. Only in rare instances, of which the notorious Court of Star Chamber is the most conspicuous, has the rule been violated; and the unpopularity of such exceptions is the best proof of the value attached by the nation to the general rule.' (6th ed. pp. 73–74.) Jenks then states that exceptions to the rule of open court are rare, consisting principally of cases involving children, trade secrets, state secrets, or certain types of annulment of marriage.
Jeremy Bentham in his Rationale of Judicial Evidence (1827), declares that public trials are the general rule and private trials the exception. (Vol. I, pp. 513–514.) Additionally, the interest of the public in open trials is separate from the interest of the parties themselves. 'Nor yet, in the class of cases in question, would it be eligible that the mode of privacy in question should take place, although it were even at the joint solicitation of both parties (or say all parties), as well as with the consent of the judge.
'The reason is, that here (as before) there is a party interested (viz. the public at large) whose interest might, by means of the privacy in question, and a sort of conspiracy, more or less explicit, between the other persons concerned (the judge included) be made a sacrifice.' (Bentham, Rationale of Judicial Evidence, Vol. I, pp. 576–577.)
In California, public trials are governed by the following:
California Constitution, Article I, section 13: 'In criminal prosecutions, in any court whatever, the party accused shall have the right to a speedy and public trial * * *.' (Cf. U.S.Const. Amend. VI.)
Civil Code, section 22.2: 'The common law of England, so far as it is not repugnant to or inconsistent with the Constitution of the United States, or the Constitution or laws of this State, is the rule of decision in all the courts of this State.'
Code of Civil Procedure, section 124: 'The sittings of every Court of justice shall be public * * *.'
Penal Code, section 686: 'In a criminal action the defendant is entitled: 1. To a speedy and public trial. * * *'
In Kirstowsky v. Superior Court, etc., 143 Cal.App.2d 745, 300 P.2d 163, the court analyzed these provisions in the light of our legal history and concluded (pp. 750–751, p. 167 of 300 P.2d): 'We are satisfied that both at common law and under our statutory law trials are intended to be public and open to the public with such exceptions as are specifically set forth in statutes, or under certain circumstances to which we will refer hereinafter. The underlying reason for public trials is well expressed by the United States Supreme Court in Re Oliver, 333 U.S. 257, 268, 68 S.Ct. 499, 505, 92 L.Ed. 682, as follows:
"The traditional Anglo-American distrust for secret trials has been variously ascribed to the notorious use of this practice by the Spanish Inquisition, to the excesses of the English Court of Star Chamber, and to the French monarchy's abuse of the letter de cachet. All of these institutions obviously symbolized a menace to liberty. In the hands of despotic groups each of them had become an instrument for the suppression of political and religious heresies in ruthless disregard of the right of an accused to a fair trial. Whatever other benefits the guarantee to an accused that his trial be conducted in public may confer upon our society, the guarantee has always been recognized as a safeguard against any attempt to employ our courts as instruments of persecution. The knowledge that every criminal trial is subject to contemporaneous review in the forum of public opinion is an effective restraint on possible abuse of judicial power."
A public trial is one which is public in the ordinary, common-sense meaning of the term. 'The doors of the court room are expected to be kept open, the public are entitled to be admitted, and the trial is to be public in all respects, as we have before suggested, with due regard to the size of the court room, the conveniences of the court, the right to exclude objectionable characters and youth of tender years, and to do other things which may facilitate the proper conduct of the trial.' (People v. Hartman, 103 Cal. 242, 245, 37 P. 153, 154.)
It is significant that in Kirstowsky the prosecutor, the defendant, and the trial judge all agreed to a closed trial, but the appellate court concluded the resulting general exclusion of the public had been erroneous. It seems beyond dispute that a public trial in California is not a private right of the parties, or even of the parties and the judge, but one involving additional interests, including those of the public, which must be taken into consideration.
Public Trial—What Interests Are Involved?
The public is not entitled to be present at every proceeding that takes place in a California courtroom. By statute certain exceptions to the general rule of open sessions of court have long been recognized. (See Code Civ.Proc. § 125 (divorce or seduction trial); Pen.Code, § 868 (preliminary examination); Civ.Code, § 226m (adoption); and Welf. & Inst.Code, § 676 (juvenile court hearings).) In a proceeding not governed by specific statute, what are the circumstances which will justify an exception to the general rule of public trial?
To answer this question properly we should give thought to the various interests at stake in a public trial, for with these in mind we can better evaluate the circumstances which may justify an exception to the general rule.
In criminal trials these interests, as we see them, are basically three: (1) the interest of the accused, and his connections, in securing a fair trial; (2) the interest of the victim, and his connections, in obtaining justice for a particular wrong; and (3) the interest of the general public in public tranquility, in honest government, and in effective institutions. While these interests may parallel one another in a given case, more often they face in divergent directions. Each interest is entitled to recognition and consideration in each case, and no one of them can be permitted to swallow up the other two.
Interest of the Accused and His Connections
The protection of the interest of the accused is reflected in the state and federal constitutions (United States Const. 6th Amend., and Art. I, § 13, of the Calif. Const.), guaranteeing the accused in criminal prosecutions the right to a speedy and public trial. If over his objection, the defendant in a criminal case is denied a public trial, he has not received due process of law. (Cf. People v. Jelke (1954), 308 N.Y. 56, 123 N.E. 2d 769.) This interest has been fully recognized in the present case and requires no additional elaboration.
Interest of the Victim and His Connections
But the accused is not the only one vitally concerned with a criminal prosecution. The victim, if still alive, has a substantial interest in obtaining justice. So do his relatives and friends. So do his business associates. So do those who are similarly situated, or who expect to become similarly situated. Collectively, these interests may be of great importance and of far-reaching consequence. For example, if a civil rights worker is murdered in a rural area hostile to the exercise of civil rights by minority groups, the relatives friends and associates of the murdered man and the beneficiaries of his efforts, collectively, have a powerful interest in the vigorous prosecution and just disposition of criminal charges arising out of the murder. If a black automobile driver is killed by white deputy sheriffs in the course of a traffic citation, the relatives, friends, and associates of the driver, collectively, have a substantial interest in any criminal prosecution arising out of the homicide. If a white tradesman making routine deliveries of merchandise in a black neighborhood is murdered by black nationalists, the relatives, friends, and fellow workers of the murdered man, collectively, have a substantial interest in the prosecution of criminal charges arising out of the event. These interests are directly served by the vehicle of a public trial, which makes manifest the operation of the principles of justice to those directly concerned. The therapeutic functions of a public trial in reducing community tension, in superseding private vengeance, in restricting self-help, in eliminating the blood feud, in removing excuses for lynch and vigilante law, provide values which, perhaps, society has been inclined to take for granted in recent years, but which, since Watts, have again become visible elements in the administration of justice. The origin of trial by jury as successor to, among others, trial by battle, should not be forgotten. As put by Stephen, 'Criminal justice was originally a rude substitute for, or limitation upon, private war. * * *' (1 Stephen, History of the Criminal Law of England, p. 425.) The interest of the victim in obtaining justice is directly served by a trial in open court operation in full public view and unfolding decisions before the gaze of those directly affronted by the crime for which the defendant stands accused.
We do not believe these powerful benefits of a public trial can be permanently dispensed with by society, except at its peril.
Interest of the General Public
The third interest in a criminal trial is that of the general public in the operation of its legal institutions. A properly-conducted public trial, in addition to serving the interest of the accused and his connections and the interest of the victim and his connections, maintains the confidence of the community in the honesty of its institutions, in the competence of its public officers, in the impartiality of its judges, and in the capacity of its criminal law to do justice. Public trial has been a basic tenet of our legal heritage, at least since the abolition of the Star Chamber three hundred years ago. Secrecy, on the other hand, is the antithesis of the orderly operation of a public institution, breeding either suspicion, distrust, rumor, and out-rage, or apathy, indifference, and neglect. Suppose a charge of bribery against a state senator, tax assessor, or member of Congress; suppose a charge of conflict of interest against a councilman, supervisor, or commissioner; suppose the prosecution of the spouse of a judge or the relative of a prominent politician. In each of these cases public confidence in the administration of justice is directly served by the procedure of an open trial which exposes to the scrutiny of the public the conduct of the case and the actions of public officers, police, prosecutors, and trial judge in the performance of their duties. By following the course of events the public is able to evaluate the competence and fairness with which the case is handled. At the conclusion of such a trial deficiencies or excesses in the conduct of public affairs have been exposed for remedial action, and, normally, the public is satisfied that the matter has received and equitable and proper disposition. We do not think the same result would follow if large portions of such criminal trials were to take place in closed session with the public excluded. A closed procedure would largely undermine the function a public trial performs in maintaining public confidence in public institutions.
Generally speaking, we may say that in a criminal trial the interest of the accused is represented by defense counsel; the interest of the victim is represented by the prosecutor;2 and the interest of the public is represented by the judge. Perhaps we can epitomize these three interests: the interest of the accused lies in a Fair Trial; the interest of the victim in Justice in This Case; and the interest of the public in the Impartial Administration of Justice. No court would wish to sacrifice a Fair Trial to the interest of the victim, or to sacrifice Justice in This Case to the interest of the accused, or to sacrifice the Impartial Administration of Justice to the interest of either the accused or the victim. The problem is one of balance and accommodation among conflicting interests, each of which deserves full recognition. It is apparent that an accommodation among such interests involves considerable judicial skill, for there are eight possible combinations in which these interests may be found, ranging from those in which all representatives are agreed upon an open trial to those in which all favored a closed trial.3
No Justification Was Shown For Closed Proceedings
Since open trials are the general rule and closed trials the exception, our basic question is whether the proceedings either fell within and of the recognized exceptions to the rule of public trial, or were based on circumstances so extraordinary that a court should create a new exception to fit the facts of this particular case. If the case for an exception has not been made out, then to support its order of exclusion respondent must rely on the proposition that in a criminal trial it may conduct all proceedings outside the presence of the jury in closed session at the request of the accused.
Clearly, the case did not fall within any of California's statutory exceptions to the requirement of a public trial now within any of the common law exceptions referred to by Jenks—children, trade secrets, official secrets, or annulments. Nor did it fall within those exceptions to a public trial which have heretofore been recognized under California case law—maintaining decorum in court (People v. Kerrigan, 73 Cal. 222, 14 P. 849), preserving the public peace (People v. Letoile, 31 Cal.App. 166, 169, 159 P. 1057), or permitting a witness to testify who otherwise could not testify (Kirstowsky v. Superior Court, etc., 143 Cal.App. 2d 745, 754, 300 P.2d 163).
Other extraordinary circumstances conceivably can furnish good reason for closing all or part of a public trial, but such circumstances must amount to a positive showing of necessity before they can justify a departure from normal and historic procedure with its attendant sacrifice of other interests served by a public trial. In the present case there was no showing of extraordinary circumstances which might create a necessity for closed proceedings. The record contains no racial, religious, civil rights, or sexual overtones, nor does it suggest intimidation of witnesses, rumored racketeering, or other exceptional factors which in some other case might justify a departure from the usual procedure. Rather, the record suggests that the circumstances surrounding the murder and robbery of a bartender of $136 were ordinary, for as noted in the statement of the judge, undisputed by counsel, no great amount of publicity had accompanied the case and no inflammatory reports had appeared in the press.
The subject of the first closed sessions—the validity of the conduct of the lineup and whether witnesses present at the lineup should be permitted to testify—does not appear to us a subject likely to generate extreme prejudice against the defendant merely because it is referred to in testimony in open court outside the presence of the jury and thereafter might possibly be mentioned in newspaper accounts of the trial, which the jurors have been earnestly and repeatedly instructed not to read and to wholly disregard if accidentally brought to their attention. (Holt v. United States, 218 U.S. 245, 251, 31 S.Ct. 2, 6, 54 L.Ed. 1021.) 'If the mere opportunity for prejudice of corruption is to raise a presumption that they exist, it will be hard to maintain jury trial under the conditions of the present day.' (Holmes, J.) Nor do we consider the subject of the second closed sessions—the refusal of Mrs. Casto to testify—one likely to create irreparable prejudice against the defendant had it been discussed in open court in the absence of the jury, been later reported in the public media, and thereafter accidentally come to the attention of some of the jurors. It is less than startling to learn that the girl friend of a defendant may be unwilling to testify as a witness against him. We do not think the possible prejudicial effect of the circulation of either of these items of information, even if it be assumed that rumors about them would come to the attention of the jurors, is of sufficient magnitude to justify the sacrifice of a public trial.4
Since in the present case no showing was made of extraordinary circumstances to justify the need for closed proceedings, in support of the present order we are left with the naked proposition that all proceedings in a criminal trial outside the presence of the jury may be conducted in closed session at the request of the accused. We find no substantial legal support for this proposition.
To sustain its order the trial court apparently relied exclusively on a recommendation of the Reardon Report of the American Bar Association, Standards Relating to Fair Trial and Free Press (1966).5 That report, while entitled to the utmost consideration and respect, advances proposals for court rules and recommendations for legislation which, until adopted in a particular jurisdiction, do not have the force of law. By itself the report cannot operate to supersede the constitutional and statutory framework which presently governs the conduct of criminal trials in California. But significantly for us, the Reardon Report limits its proposals for closed trial sessions to cases in which there is a substantial likelihood of interference with the defendant's right to a fair trial by an impartial jury, and it suggests that closed hearings during trial be ordered only on 'limited occasions.' (p. 143.) But even in such a restricted sense, the conclusions of the Reardon Report are only proposals. Other distinguished groups of lawyers and jurists have studied the same problems and we think their conclusions are equally entitled to consideration and respect from us, even when they differ from those contained in the Reardon Report. These other reports include the Medina Report of the Special Committee of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York on Freedom of the Press and Fair Trial (1967), and the Kaufman Report to the Judicial Conference of the United States on the Operation of the Jury System (1968), neither of which recommends closed sessions of public trials as a solution to the problem of prejudicial publicity.
The only other authority suggested as justification for the procedures adopted by the trial court is the case of Sheppard v. Maxwell, 384 U.S. 333, 86 S.Ct. 1507, 16 L.Ed.2d 600. That case, however, contains no suggestion that criminal trials, or parts of trials, should be conducted in closed session. None of the remedies it advances for the control of prejudicial publicity—sequestration of the jury, continuance of the trial, change of venue, directions to the jury not to read or listen to news reports, insulation of witnesses, control of the release by participants of information to the press—implies any abandonment of the tradition of public trial. Indeed the opinion seems to emphasize the contrary, when in discussing the control of trial publicity it declares that it should have been the aim of the trial court to induce the reporting of the case 'as it unfolded in the courtroom—and not as pieced together from extra-judicial statements.' (p. 362, p. 1522 of 86 S.Ct.)
Secret sessions would tend, if anything, to aggravate extrajudicial reporting of trials. The course of events in the case at bench illustrates the futility of attempts to conduct closed sessions of a public trial. (1) The proceedings had been initiated by indictment. Presumably the proceedings before the grand jury, including any identification of the defendant in a lineup, were part of the grand jury transcript, which after the defendant is in custody normally becomes available to the public. (Pen.Code, § 938.1.) (2) The attempt to keep the commitment of Dorothy Casto a secret did not succeed. (3) With two applications for extraordinary writs to this court, we think it a fair inference that the attempted secrecy brought far more publicity to the case than would have resulted from a trial in open court.
But, argues the public defender, although exact precedent for the action of the trial court may be lacking, nothing has been lost by the innovation of closed sessions because at the conclusion of the trial a record of the proceedings will become available to the public. He thus raises the question whether delayed public access to a written record of the proceedings may serve as a substitute for a public trial. Does such delayed publication adequately recognize the vital interest of the victim seeking justice in the case and of the general public scrutinizing the administration of justice?
As a general proposition we think it does not. First, the judicial process does not unfold legally and normally when over half a trial takes place behind closed doors. The therapeutic value of a public trial is apt to be wholly lost and to be replaced by public suspicion and distrust of the proceedings. In particular instances the unfolding of the legal process may be superseded by what amounts to a legal fiat arrived at behind closed doors. For example, the legal reasoning behind a court's ruling turning a killer loose for technical reasons, if it has not been previously developed in open session, may be comprehended after the event only with difficulty and misgiving.
Second, only part of the trial proceedings is reflected in the written transcript. Important, sometimes vital, parts of the trial, including the appearance, demeanor, expression, gestures, intonations, hesitancies, inflections, and tone of voice of witnesses, of counsel, and of the judge are not there. In the absence of public attendance a substantial part of the real record of the proceedings will have been permanently lost to public scrutiny. As every trial lawyer knows the written record of oral testimony reflects only part of what occurs in a courtroom. Identical words, spoken in different intonations and with different gestures, may carry opposite meanings. For example, the meaning of the words, 'A friend in need is a friend indeed', wholly depends on context and inflection. The words of a bullying judge may appear quite reasonable on the written record. And worthless testimony may acquire plausibility when considered at second-hand. In certain instances the public will lose its opportunity to properly evaluate the quality of the proceedings.
Third, disclosure of abuses in the legal process is postponed and prompt correction of those abuses is likewise necessarily postponed—with consequent loss to the administration of justice. Not only is correction postponed, but supervision and public scrutiny are substantially lessened for, every restriction on the reporting of crime 'effects some reduction of press scrutiny and public knowledge of the law enforcement process.' (Friendly and Goldfarb, Crime and Publicity (1967), p. 196.)
Finally, the written transcript of the proceedings at the conclusion of the trial is not as accessible to those with an interest in the proceedings as are public sessions of a trial. The availability of single, or even multiple, copies of the written record is no guaranty that interested persons will be able to puzzle out the intricacies of the proceedings. If appellate courts have difficulty in following the course of events in a trial from a written record, as we have had in the present case, it can be anticipated that those untrained in the law will have greater difficulties.
We conclude it is no sufficient answer to say there is a written record of the proceedings which will later become available for public inspection. To quote Bentham again: 'Without publicity, all other checks are insufficient: in comparison of publicity, all other checks are of small account. Recordation, appeal, whatever other institutions might present themselves in the character of checks, would be found to operate rather as cloaks than checks; as cloaks in reality, as checks only in appearance.' (Bentham, Rationale of Judicial Evidence, Vol. I, p. 524.)
We return again to the proposition that the interest of the defendant cannot be allowed to swallow up other important interests in a public trial unless as a great exception on a showing of dire necessity. Were we to condone the procedure followed by the trial court in this case, it would follow that great segments of practically every criminal trial could be conducted in secrecy behind closed doors.
Danger of the Best Becoming the Enemy of the Good
It is apparent from the transcript that the judge with the most laudable of motives undertook to protect the rights of the defendant by isolation the jury from all influences except those which the judge, by advance analysis, concluded were proper. But it is impossible for a trial to occur in a vacuum, or for a jury, unless locked up, to avoid all contact with the outside world. In following a will-o'-the-wisp the judge, at the instigation of the public defender, found himself forced further and further away from the conduct and practices of a public trial as they exist at common law, and in the direction of civil, equity, and canon law procedure under which evidence is privately taken in advance by deposition, analyzed and made a subject for argument, and only then presented to the trier of fact in open court. (See Scott v. Scott, [1913] A.C. 417, 432–433, 470–472.) This tendency appeared throughout the proceedings but was present in its most aggravated form when a considerable portion of the trial took place before the prosecutor was allowed to make an opening statement. As a matter of abstract logic the procedure was impeccable. But as a matter of the practical disposition of the business of the court, with due recognition to the interests involved, it provided a startling departure from the trial procedure prescribed by the common law and by statute. (Pen.Code, § 1093.)
The danger that ex parte proceedings will lower the quality of the administration of justice is a factor of which legal commentators have always been acutely conscious. (See VI Wigmore on Evidence (3rd ed.), § 1834; Bentham, Rationale of Judicial Evidence (1827) pp. 523–524.) We think their fears are solidly based, and that as a solution to the problem of prejudicial publicity, a closed trial creates more problems than it solves. To quote from Friendly and Goldfarb's conclusions in Crime and Publicity (1967), on the conflict of free press and fair trial: 'In the search for that improvement, however, the danger of the best becoming the enemy of the good must be avoided. A perfect solution—neat, automatic, invariably effective—is beyond attainment in a real and imperfect world. The drive toward perfection tempts the seeker into the perilous course of changing basic institutions, unaware that what he is doing is in fact undercutting principles and practices that lie at the heart of America's democratic system. It proposes growing the perfect rose by destroying the garden. The Reardon Committee found that the problem of prejudicial publicity 'is of limited proportions.' The techniques of solution must be limited as well. * * * In theory, prohibiting all potentially prejudicial news might be an airtight solution, just as in theory procedures advocated by Senator Joseph R. McCarthy might have guaranteed that the Federal service would be purged of any employee about whom there was the faintest taint of disloyalty. But in practice what looks like an airtight solution is less certain.
'And its price is too high. Most of its cost, furthermore, would be levied against the administration of justice itself. As it now operates, with all its faults, the press serves the cause of justice far more than it subverts it. For it is the agent of public scrutiny.' (pp. 238–239.)
In reversing a secret judgment for contempt by a Michigan court, Mr. Justice Black, In Re Oliver, 333 U.S. 257, 68 S.Ct. 499, 92 L.Ed. 682, had this to say: 'First. Counsel have not cited and we have been unable to find a single instance of a criminal trial conducted in camera in any federal, state, or municipal court during the history of this country. Nor have we found any record of even one such secret criminal trial in England since abolition of the Court of Star Chamber in 1641, and whether that court ever convicted people secretly is in dispute. Summary trials for alleged misconduct called contempt of court have not been regarded as an exception to this universal rule against secret trials, unless some other Michigan one-man grand jury case may represent such an exception.' (p. 266, p. 504 of 68 S.Ct.).
In the present case it is startling to see the evils of secret proceedings so proliferating in seven short weeks that the court could reach the astonishing result of committing a citizen to jail in secret proceedings, could contemplate inquisitorial proceedings against a newspaper reporter for reporting this commitment, and could adopt the position that the district attorney, the chief law enforcement officer in the county, was prohibited on pain of contempt from advising the public that someone had been sent secretly to jail. In effect, the court, in seeking the ideal solution to the problem of trial publicity jettisoned important safe-guards of California law by conduction what amounted to a Star Chamber proceeding against Dorothy Casto and committing her to jail by an order suspiciously resembling a lettre de cachet. As so often happens, participants in secret proceedings quickly tend to lose their perspective, and the quality of the proceedings suffers as a consequence.
We conclude that no showing was made to justify the holding of closed sessions in a criminal trial, that the general rule summarized in Craig v. Harney, 331 U.S. 367, 374, 67 S.Ct. 1249, 1254, 91 L.Ed. 1546, is applicable: 'A trial is a public event. What transpires in the court room is public property.'
The peremptory writ shall issue.
1. The reporter's transcript reflects the following chronology:25 January—Motions and orders in chambers Jury selectionClosed Open26 January—Jury selectionOpen29 January—Jury selectionOpen30 January—Jury selectionOpen some closed 1 February—Motions and evidence on conduct of lineupClosed 2 February—DoClosed 5 February—DoClosed 6 February—DoClosed 7 February—DoClosed 8 February—DoClosed 9 February—DoClosed13 February—DoClosedVisit to scene of crime; Psychiatric testimony for defendant on perception and memory retention14 February—Psychiatric testimony for plaintiff, same subjectsClosed15 February—Motions re opening statementClosed16 February—DoClosed19 February—DoClosed20 February—Opening statement of plaintiff TrialOpen21 February—TrialOpen23 February—TrialOpen26 February—DoOpen27 February—DoOpen28 February—DoOpen29 February—Proposed testimony of Casto Trial continuedClosed Open 1 March—TrialOpen 4 March—Hearing on prospective witness Casto found in contemptClosed 5 March—TrialOpen 7 March—Discussion contempt jurors singly quizzedClosedTrial continuedOpen 8 March—Hearing on prospective witness CastoClosed11 March—TrialOpenFurther hearing on CastoClosed13 March—Witness Casto sworn—claim of self-incrimination;Immunity hearingClosed
2. During substantial periods of English law the conduct of criminal prosecutions was largely left in the hands of private persons who considered themselves to have been wronged. (1 Stephen, History of the Criminal Law of England, pp. 419, 493.)
3. The eight possible combinations of demands by those interested may be illustrated by a table in which O stands for a demand for an open trial, and Cl for a closed trial.C2DefendantC3ProsecutorC4Judge1.OOO2.OOCl3.OClO4.OClCl5.ClOCl6.ClOO7.ClClO8.ClClClEven if all parties are agreed upon closed proceedings (#8 above) an order excluding the public may be erroneous. (Kirstowsky v. Superior Court, etc., 143 Cal.App.2d 745, 300 P.2d 163.) An agreement by the prosecutor and the judge that scandalous proceedings should be closed (#4 above) is ineffective over the objection of the defendant. (People v. Jelke, 308 N.Y. 56, 123 N.E.2d 769.)The combination involved in this case is #5, in which the defendant and the judge agreed upon closed proceedings over the objection of the prosecutor.
4. This is not to indicate we cannot imagine subjects which on rare occasions might be sufficiently prejudicial to a defendant's interest to require closed proceedings for limited periods of time. For example, if the specific text of a confession to a particularly brutal murder had to be discussed in testimony prior to its admission in evidence, the publication of the text might be sufficiently prejudicial to the interest of the defendant to require some sacrifice of the other interests in a public trial by receiving evidence discussing its text in closed proceedings. On the other hand, if in a given case the issue were the voluntariness of a statement given the police and that issue could be determined without disclosing the text of the statement, we would see no reason to sacrifice the other interests involved in a public trial by conducting closed sessions of court.
5. Section 3.5 of the Report reads in part:'3.5 Conduct of the trial.'It is recommended that the following standards be adopted in each jurisdiction to govern the conduct of a criminal trial when problems relating to the dissemination of potentially prejudicial material are raised.
FOOTNOTE. '(d) Exclusion of the public from bearings or arguments outside the presence of the jury.'If the jury is not sequestered, the defendant shall be permitted to move that the public, including representatives of the news media, be excluded from any portion of the trial that takes place outside the presence of the jury on the ground that dissemination of evidence or argument adduced at the hearing is likely to interfere with the defendant's right to a fair trial by an impartial jury. The motion shall be granted unless it is determined that there is no substantial likelihood of such interference. With the consent of the defendant, the court may take such action on its own motion or at the suggestion of the prosecution. Whenever such action is taken, a complete record of the proceedings from which the public has been excluded shall be kept and shall be made available to the public following the completion of the trial. Nothing in this recommendation is intended to interfere with the power of the court, in connection with any hearing held outside the presence of the jury, to caution those present that dissemination of specified information by any means of public communication, prior to the rendering of the verdict, may jeopardize the right to a fair trial by an impartial jury.'
FLEMING, Associate Justice.


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Disney Imagineering's Project Kiwi is a free walking robot that will make you believe in Groot
The black curtain pulls aside and a character straight out of the movies waves hello. This is not an uncommon occurrence when I'm around Imagineers, but this time is special. The character isn't a costume, it's a robot. And, unlike the many animatronic figures you've seen in the parks, it's not stuck in one place. No, this character is walking towards me, attached only by a thin cable used for programming.
The gait is smooth, the arms swing in a lifelike manner and the feet plant realistically. The body sways exactly as you'd expect it to. There's no other way to say it, it's ambling. This is Project Kiwi, a small-scale, free-roaming robotic actor — the first of its kind for Disney and a real robotics milestone.
The holy grail of themed entertainment has been established for decades now: a fully mobile, bipedal character that matches the appearance, personality and scale of the original. Various non-mobile levels of this vision have been achieved at parks around the world, including the incredibly lifelike Na'Vi Shaman, The A1000 figure that powers characters like Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge's Hondo Ohnaka and the smoothly expressive Belle from Beauty and the Beast at Tokyo Disneyland. There have also been some cool mobile experiments like the self-piloting droid "Jake".
The pint sized character has accurately rendered textures on its face, hands and feet. It's dressed in a distressed red flight suit that you may remember from the films. And its eyes are expressive as it looks at me and waves. This is the moment, the one that Disney Imagineers and park goers alike have been waiting decades to realize. This is a real, walk around character that is at the proper scale, kid scale.
A couple of weeks ago at Walt Disney Imagineering in Southern California, I saw just how close they finally are to making that dream come true. A bipedal platform, developed completely in house over the past 3 years by WDI researchers and roboticists — dressed up to look like a roughly two and a half foot tall Groot.
Even though the version of Kiwi that I'm looking at is Groot-flavored, it's important to stress that this is a platform first and foremost, which means that it could take this form when it gets to the parks, or another form entirely. It's important while developing a character to have a target character that can tell you whether or not you're hitting an established mark of believability.
Kiwi is also is still very much a work in progress. I wouldn't expect to see this in the wild soon, there is still a lot of work to be done on the way that Kiwi works and interacts with people and WDI does not have immediate plans to put it in the parks.
But even at this stage it's an incredible feat of engineering that genuinely radiates that elusive characteristic that Disney always searches for with its figures: presence.
I was able to speak to the lead on Project Kiwi, R&D Imagineer Principal Scott LaValley as well as Advanced Development Studio Executive SVP Jon Snoddy about how the platform came together over the past few years.
"Project KIWI started about three years ago to figure out how we can bring our smaller characters to life at their actual scale in authentic ways," LaValley says. "It's an exciting time for bipedal robotics and with an incredible team and our combination of technology, artistry, and magic, we are bringing characters to life that could not have happened anywhere but Disney."
I've talked a bit about the unique Imagineering process in my previous pieces on how Disney builds reactive robotics, autonomous stuntbots and even entire lands. Imagineering works a lot like a startup in the way that it comes up with a problem to solve and then goes about pulling in other departments to help it get a solution. There is a remarkably ego-free nature to much of the way that WDI actually finds those solutions, too. They are as likely to find a key component off the shelf as they are to design, develop and patent it in house.
The interconnected nature of Imagineering departments like ride design, show systems, special effects, animatronics department, Tech Studio R&D and Disney Research means that they share solutions across the stack as well.
The guiding thread to all of it, of course, is storytelling. This guiding force exists at all levels of the process, keeping the project moving in the right direction — towards a better way to tell stories and transport guests.
Image Credits: Walt Disney Imagineering R&D Inc.
With Kiwi, the end goal was clear, a character that could walk on its own and interact with park guests. Unfortunately, due to the scale and complexity of the figure and the requirements for interaction and walking, no 'off the shelf' platforms would do. The fact is that there are actually only a handful of truly viable bipedal robotics platforms anywhere in the world and the vast majority of them are being created for industrial applications, with a handful of 'human-scale' solutions that are designed as marketing set pieces rather than truly autonomous systems.
So to hit that goal, Imagineering turned to R&D and LaValley's team. LaValley had come to Disney from Boston Dynamics, where he worked on the first version of its biped robot Atlas.
The project scope was that they needed a biped robot that was battery powered and could be programmed to handle autonomous interactions with park guests and striped gestures and emotes. The team would take the next 3 years to build what they needed — much of which was custom for reasons we'll get into shortly.
It's clear at a glance that Kiwi has no operator inside. The human brain is pretty good at instinctually understanding whether a space is just too small to have a person in it. In order to achieve the small size, the team had to first build a custom skeleton that had room for every motor and actuator Kiwi would need to achieve 50 degrees of freedom, all while keeping it humanoid in shape so that it could be 'dressed up' as any number of characters.
First came the frame. Prototypes were built from custom printed polymer and then eventually custom metal parts using industrial printers. The armatures and segments that they needed to house the critical components were just too complex to mill or cast. The cleverly printed metal skeleton is hollow throughout, allowing a 'marrow conduit' for air which rushes through the body cooling the motors and actuators. In the current Kiwi prototype the air comes in through the collar area of the suit, flows throughout the body, propelled by fans embedded in the skeleton and exhausts near the bottom of the unit. Eventually it will use the clothing as a shroud to help air flow out near the feet.
Though there is some audible noise, even in this early state it is very low, allowing audio playing out of a speaker to enable conversation.
As you can see in the exclusive progress video embedded above, the lower sections were built first. Early testing around the office shows the legs and torso sneaking, bouncing, shuffling and strutting through Imagineering. This is probably the only workplace in the world where the bottom half of a torso can tiptoe past your office while you're eating lunch and it doesn't even merit a pause between bites.
An enormous amount of completely custom robotics work went into the Kiwi platform. In the demonstration I saw, young Groot had a safety tether and control cable for live programming but nothing on the rig itself needed support, it was free roaming with on board battery power that LaValley says hits around the 45 minute mark currently with more longevity hoped for in the final version. In fact, a next-generation skeleton is already under development that is lighter and more efficient.
Image Credits: Walt Disney Imagineering R&D Inc. / Walt Disney Imagineering R&D Inc.
The legs use a system that offers a kinetic counter-balance, allowing the force of having to move and plant a foot to be off-set, making motions more power efficient and quicker. Think of a spring loaded heavy gate that makes it easier for you to swing open — but no springs, and a robotic limb instead of a gate.
The feet plant realistically for the very simple reason that they must actually support the figure. This gives it an additional layer of believability that just doesn't happen with externally supported characters that "fake" a foot plant. LaValley demonstrated that the figure could easily stay afoot even if it was shoved gently or if a hand was rested on its shoulder. This kind of self-balancing is something that humans do unconsciously and continuously but it must be built and programmed in to an ambulatory robot.
Many patentable inventions went into this creation. One of them is a clever system of gears that translates energy across joints, allowing them to share motors with one another even across a joint like a knee or wrist. This means fewer components and the ability to keep motor and actuator packages small and compact enough to fit underneath theming.
In order to minimize the amount of wiring throughout Kiwi — since wires are always the biggest points of failure — the team created a set of origami-like circuit boards joined by integrated flex cabling. Think of your standard computer circuit board but sliced into segments and mounted to the exterior of the hollow 'bones'. They wrap around the limbs and other body parts, binding the control systems and motors being controlled together into a local group that reduces the amount of harnessing that needs to be spread across joints and throughout the structure.
No actuators — the components that decide how to move a limb — that exist had the capabilities that the team needed, so they built them from scratch. At one point, LaValley handed me a ring holding iteration after iteration of a dozen actuator elements. I was holding years worth of engineering, experimentation, failure and progress on a simple bit of wire twisted together at the end.
Up next for Project Kiwi is a new set of actuators that can dynamically apply torque plus added sensing capabilities for more stability and reaction to uneven ground or interactions. You can imagine that, as a free roaming character people will want to take pictures with it and I doubt kids would be able to resist running up for a hug. The skeleton must be able to sense and react quickly and smoothly to those sudden external inputs in order to stay upright and keep looking natural.
Moving from a pure IK system to a fully torque sensing system will allow for the platform to make on the fly adjustments that compensate for terrain or interaction with other performers or guests.
All of the work the team put into custom gearing, motors and actuation has paid off in spades with the ridiculously smooth and natural looking movements of Kiwi's arms and legs. Quick waves, shrugs, dance moves and even boxing jabs all look like a real — if slightly gentle — creature is performing them.
The team also demonstrated the custom built performance software that they designed which allows Kiwi to have different kinds of gaits with personality layered on top. The bottom layer is an IK-style gait system that keeps Kiwi upright and walking, but then layering the personalities on top adds character to the walk while still maintaining stability. Bouncy, jaunty walks, limps, sad or downhearted walks, all with the other motions of arms and head contributing to a constantly shifting center of mass and momentum. The paddling ducks feet under the water is that gait system that takes the external inputs and integrates it into the walk naturally.
The current prototype software has a series of set behaviors, with a timeline that allows them to program new behaviors and actions by toggles or adjusting curves that control movement. With a series of tweaks in the software the changes become evident immediately, with Groot's "mood" becoming immediately evident in his walk.
One moment he is bouncing along swinging his arms jauntily, clearly happy to be there. Then the next moment his arms are slumped, his head is hung and he is slowly plodding — clearly sad to be leaving the fun behind. It's a remarkable bit of performance software.
And even though the expressive eyes are already impressive — the team is not done. Up next on the agenda is a sensory package that allows Kiwi to more fully understand the world around it and to identify people and their faces. This becomes important because eye contact is such an emotive and powerful tool to use in transporting a participant.
Even without the sensing software I can tell you that the experience of this 2.5ft Groot locking eyes with me, smiling and waving was just incredibly transportive. Multiple times throughout my interaction I completely forgot that it was a robot at all.
As I mentioned at the top, the Project Kiwi platform still has a lot of work left to do before it makes any appearances in the parks. But it's already well on the road to being viable for things like stage performances, photo ops and eventually free roaming deployment in the parks.
That is really the vision, Snoddy says that the goal is to move the characters we love from across Disney's pantheon into the spaces of the guests, elevating the entirety of the park to a live transportive experience, rather than a single ride or dark room. And to do it at the proper scale to make them genuine and capable of making guests believe. With these kinds of platforms, the possibilities are there to make the entire parks themselves a living breathing home for the characters, rather than the tightly controlled environments of the rides themselves.
The arc of history in this Imagineering journeys is drawn in robots. From Great Moments with Mr Lincoln, to incredibly expressive characters like the Na'Vi Shaman anchored inside a dark ride, to characters that hold up in bright, well lit spaces. Project Kiwi is the next frontier, allowing them to step off of the pedestal and right into the world of the guest.
One of the most fascinating fields in robotics currently is HRI or human-robot interaction. This multidisciplinary effort to help humans and robots communicate better is often focused on safety and awareness in industrial settings. But I've long had that the most incredibly interesting work in this space is being done in Imagineering R&D. Over 100 million people pass through Disney's parks per year, and the number of opportunities that they have to react to and interact with robotic characters grows yearly. And with projects like Kiwi on the horizon, this field is going to explode with new kinds of data and learnings.
And, of course, we'll get to meet some of our favorite characters looking and acting as real as we've ever seen them in our world.
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Cultural property imaging is a necessary part of long term preservation of cultural heritage. While the physical conditions of objects will change over time, imaging serves as a way to document and represent heritage in a moment in time of the life of the item. Different methods of imaging produce results that are applicable in various circumstances. Not every method is appropriate for every object, and not every object needs to be imaged by multiple methods. In addition to preservation and conservation related concerns, imaging can also serve to enhance research and study of cultural heritage.

Purpose
One reason for imaging objects is to make the items available for study and scholarship without incurring unnecessary harm to the object. In addition to providing images to scholars, images can also be added to online catalogs and databases to increase the size of the audience interacting with the objects and allow them to view the item with no added risk.

Another reason is for documentary purposes, especially as it relates to conservation. According to the American Institute for Conservation, "Documentation is basic to the ethical practice of conservation." Imaging prior to conservation allows conservators to record the current state of the object, which can then be compared to later images following conservation. This allows someone in the future to look back and see the ways in which an item was impacted by conservation. Images taken over different periods of time can also reveal changes in condition and can be used to minimize damage going forward. The American Institute for Conservation's Guide to Digital Photography and Conservation Documentation is a useful reference guide for the application of digital imaging to the field of conservation. It details guidelines for equipment, techniques, and practices that are in line with best practices for conservation. This covers everything from suggestions for types of cameras and memory cards to discussing processing details and how to apply metadata.

An additional purpose is found in the way imaging enhances scholarship. Different types of imaging can reveal materials and techniques used in creating an object that are not immediately evident with the naked eye.

Methods
There are many methods that are employed in imaging. These may include different types of lighting as well as the use of radiography.  Multiple energy levels and technologies have been used for cultural heritage imaging, including imaging mummy masks with multiple spectral bands of light, different x-ray technologies, optical coherence tomography, and terahertz imaging. Photographing objects under standard conditions is a typical practice to preserve the item in perpetuity, but not every object will need more specialized imaging. Those doing the imaging or requesting the imaging be done will look at each object on a case-by-case basis to determine the usefulness of specialized imaging. In some cases combinations of different types of imaging will be more effective than one type on its own. This can be seen in projects like the Getty's conservation of Guercino's Jacob Blessing the Sons of Joseph and the Getty's APPEAR project, details of which can be found on a blog by the Penn Museum's Artifact Lab.

Photography
Photography under normal illumination will produce a record of the appearance of an object in standard conditions. Standard conditions typically mean uniform illumination with minimal glare. In conservation, these images will serve as a "before treatment" record. They can also serve as a catalog image for in-house use or an online collection. Following a standard image capture, subsequent images can be taken under various conditions to highlight areas that need treatment or closer monitoring.

Raking illumination

Further information:Raking light

Raking illumination highlights texture on the surface of an object. This is achieved by using a single light source at a low angle relative to the object. Images taken under these conditions can reveal deviations in the surface of an object – gouges, scratches, paint loss, bulges, and more. With archaeological objects this may reveal how tools were made or how food was processed (e.g. cut marks on bones). In paintings it can show how the artist used the paint.

Specular illumination

Specular illumination documents the surface sheen of an object. With paintings, it is used to highlight areas of abnormality. While raking illumination will produce a record of these abnormalities with greater clarity, specular illumination is less dependent on the orientation of the light. There are two basic set ups for specular illumination – axial and oblique. An axial setup requires the camera and the light source to be on the same axis. The camera is parallel to the surface of the object, and the light source is next to the camera. An oblique setup requires the camera and the light source to be on opposite sides of the subject, but each are at the same angle relative to the object. Specular light can allow conservators to see tool marks on wooden objects, or indentations that seemed invisible.

Transmitted illumination

Transmitted illumination is used to highlight thickness and losses among other things. Transmitted illumination uses a light source that is behind the object being photographed. (For two dimensional objects this has a very similar function to a light table.) This "back lighting" provides a way to see things like cracks and holes as well as revealing the general structure of an item. With something like papyrus, it can help to reveal the condition of the individual fibers. It can also be useful with textiles or basketry items where a tight weave may make it difficult to see damage or clues about how the item was woven.

Infrared Photography

Infrared photography has been used in conservation since the 1930s. In art the most well-known application is being able to see underdrawings of paintings or changes in composition. Picasso's the Blue Room is a famous example of this. It has also been used to enhance legibility of manuscripts and inscriptions, as seen with the Dead Sea Scrolls and the International Dunhuang Project. Carbon black ink tends to show up very well under infrared.

Ultraviolet Photography
Ultraviolet photography is frequently used for differentiation and characterization of materials. Ultraviolet radiation can cause materials to emit fluorescence that can be seen and photographed. The intensity and color of the fluorescence is influenced by the amount of material, the types of materials, and the amount of deterioration.

UV radiation can also reveal things not visible to the naked eye. Codex Sinaiticus contains the oldest, complete copy of the New Testament. On the last page of the Gospel of John UV radiation shows that the final sentence was added later. While the implications for this are rooted in biblical scholarship, this shows that there is more to manuscripts than what is found at the surface level. In conservation this shows that with UV radiation even the "invisible" becomes part of the record for the object and must be documented and monitored.

With paintings, UV can reveal where prior restorations have occurred. The varnish on top of a painting is usually more fluorescent than the pigments. If there is paint on top of a varnish, the conservator knows that there has been some restoration in the past. UV can also help to reveal materials used in a painting.

Multi-Spectral Imaging (MSI)

A Multispectral image is an image with capture points across the light spectrum. Different wavelengths of light are separated by filters or illuminated with narrow bands of light. These filters can also be combined with different colors of light as well as IR and UV to produce different results and fluorescence. MSI has been used in several major projects regarding ancient manuscripts. Not only is this useful for making these texts legible and available, but these images are useful for conservation. By recording things that are not easily seen, MSI helps conservators to be aware of what they couldn't see and allows them to monitor these conditions. This can be seen in examples of paintings like the Mummy Portraits. The Penn Museum has shown through MSI that one of their portraits has an outline of the figure etched in the paint. This is something that was not visible under standard conditions, and something they didn't notice on other portraits.

MSI also helps scholars to be able to read previously illegible texts. The Archimedes Palimpsest (further discussed below) is a famous example of this, but many other palimpsests have been rendered legible by this process. Multiple groups, institutions and companies work to image manuscripts using MSI and other methods to digitally preserve them, make them accessible to scholars, and improve legibility.

Historic Structures are also being studied with MSI, as demonstrated with the study of a Civil War era house in the City of Fairfax, Virginia, with a narrowband multispectral imaging system to support research into soldiers' graffiti and preservation of the interior wall structure.

Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT)
Optical Coherence Tomography can help reveal layers and 3D visualizations of text in various media, including papyrus and paper. It has been used with multispectral imaging to provide more information about text and ink on different layers of an object. This has been used in research into papyrus mummy mask cartonnage to
image  small  areas  of  cartonnage in conjunction with narrowband multispectral imaging to reveal ink layers.

Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI)
Reflectance Transformation Imaging uses special procedures to create a polynomial texture map of an object. These PTMs are created from a set of images using a stationary camera and a single source of light that can be held in different positions.

The following is quoted from Cultural Heritage Imaging's website:

"RTI images are created from information derived from multiple digital photographs of a subject shot from a stationary camera position. In each photograph, light is projected from a different known, or knowable, direction. This process produces a series of images of the same subject with varying highlights and shadows. Lighting information from the images is mathematically synthesized to generate a mathematical model of the surface, enabling a user to re-light the RTI image interactively and examine its surface on a screen.

Each RTI resembles a single, two-dimensional (2D) photographic image. Unlike a typical photograph, reflectance information is derived from the three-dimensional (3D) shape of the image subject and encoded in the image per pixel, so that the synthesized RTI image "knows" how light will reflect off the subject. When the RTI is opened in RTI viewing software, each constituent pixel is able to reflect the software's interactive "virtual" light from any position selected by the user. This changing interplay of light and shadow in the image discloses fine details of the subject's 3D surface form.

RTI was invented by Tom Malzbender and Dan Gelb, research scientists at Hewlett-Packard Labs. A landmark paper describing these first tools and methods, named Polynomial Texture Mapping (PTM), was published in 2001."

RTI has several applications for cultural heritage. In many instances PTMs can improve the legibility of inscriptions, such as metal amulets whose inscriptions have been obscured by corrosion. PTMs have also been found to be useful in analyzing ceramics and paintings. Cracks and pitting that wasn't visible under standard conditions became visible using RTI. The Tate and the National Gallery investigated the use of PTMs and determined that they could be viable alternatives to raking light; especially since PTMs were found to be more easily replicated than raking light photographs.

With manuscripts RTI can highlight the shape and structure of pages. While these pages are typically viewed as two dimensional items, RTI makes them three dimensional and shows that there is more than just a flat page. This is helpful for legibility (for scholars) and for condition (for conservators). Scholars can see the text more clearly and may even be able to see text that was erased. This is especially true in conditions where the ink "ate" letter-shaped holes into the page surface. Conservators can use the PTMs to determine the degree of damage to the surface, as cracks, buckling, and holes become much more pronounced.

For examples of the types of results RTI can produce see the videos on Cultural Heritage Imaging's Website http://culturalheritageimaging.org/Technologies/RTI/

Radiography

Radiography is a non-destructive analysis of the internal structure of an object, that uses x-rays to create an image. For paintings this means that conservators can potentially see the inner structure of the painting and learn about the materials and techniques used by the original artist. Radiography can also be used on archaeological objects or sculptures to learn more about the internal structure of the items that would otherwise be invisible without destroying the object. This type of imaging produces a two-dimensional image of the inner workings of the item. X-ray technology has been used to read the damaged Herculaneum Papyri as opposed to trying to unroll the scroll to read its contents. As part of a conservation measure on the Ghent Altarpiece x-rays were created to better understand how the piece was painted and put together. Images from that project can be viewed on the Closer to Van Eyck website. On the Penn Museum's Artifact Lab blog, there are multiple entries discussing the applications of radiography on cultural heritage.

CT scans create a three-dimensional image from many 2-D radiographic images. This produces cross sections of images and allows for the isolation of layers. Like the 2-D images, this allows for a look at the inner sections of objects without causing damage. CT scans have been used on mummies (more similar to traditional medical uses of CT scans) as well as other objects, like cuneiform tablets. CT scans have also been used on papyrus scrolls to digitally unroll them—allowing for them to be read, but not causing any harm. The Natural History Museum in London has used CT scans to take images of some of their specimens and create 3D models. This is a much less invasive technique than the traditional model of molding and casting. All of these applications have the goal of being as noninvasive as possible while still trying to gather as much information as possible.

Magnetic resonance imaging is a technique used in radiology that does not use x-rays. It is mainly used in medical imaging to generate images of the organs of the body. It can also be applied to deceased individuals. For example, a female burial from Novosibirsk, Russia was found to have suffered from breast cancer. This type of imaging allows for a noninvasive analysis of past individuals to help scientists better understand past human ancestors.

Examples
There are hundreds and possibly thousands of examples of projects that use noninvasive imaging techniques. Highlighted here are several that are more commonly known.

Archimedes Palimpsest

The Archimedes Palimpsest is a parchment manuscript that contains writings from two different time periods. In the 13th century monks erased and wrote over a 10th-century copy of some works originally written by Archimedes. Through a combination of different imaging techniques (MSI, raking illumination and X-ray fluorescence) and various processing procedures the older layer became legible.

Syriac Galen Palimpsest
The Syriac Galen Palimpsest is a parchment manuscript with an early translation of the Greek medical philosopher Galen of Pergamon overwritten with psalms for days of the week.  MSI and later x-ray fluorescence were used to reveal the undertext of Galen.

Egyptian mummies
With the use of imaging technologies, research can be conducted on mummies without having to unwrap them. A 2014 exhibition at the British Museum highlighted these imaging techniques in conjunction with the eight mummies that were imaged. The CT scans produced allow for a digital layer by layer look at the burials. Mummy masks have been studied with six different imaging technologies in a global project involving multiple institutions to demonstrate the feasibility of using non-destructive digital imaging technology to make texts visible in images of papyrus.

Cuneiform tablets and envelopes
CT scanners have been used to look at cuneiform tablets layer by layer in order to reproduce them with a 3D printer. This has been done at Cornell University and at TU Delft ("Scanning for Syria") where scans were done of silicon molds rather than original tablets. In a presentation titled, "Using CT to Image and 3D print Cuneiform Tablets without Removing Them from Their Envelopes," at the ASOR annual meeting in 2016 Dr. Andrew Shortland discussed how his team had figured out a way to isolate the inner tablet from the envelope and read what was on it without breaking the outer, envelope layer.

En-Gedi Scroll
Rendered unreadable after a fire in 600 CE, the En-Gedi Scroll is the earliest copy of a Pentateuchal book ever found in a Holy Ark. This scroll cannot be touched without inflicting further damage, making noninvasive imaging an ideal technique for revealing the text inside. Using micro-CT scanning, which creates a 3D rendering of the scroll where brightness corresponds to density, conservators were able to distinguish the dense metallic ink from the carbon-based scroll. Using virtual unwrapping techniques, computer scientists were able to convert the 3D position-density information provided by the scan into a 2D visualization of the 'unwrapped' scroll.

References

External links
 R.B. Toth Associates
 Duke University Libraries
 UCL Deep Imaging Technologies
 The Lazarus Project
 Early Manuscripts Electronic Library (EMEL)
 West Semitic Research Project
 Ancient Lives, New Discoveries  (at the British Museum)
 CT Scanning and 3D Printing of Cuneiform Tablets

Conservation and restoration of cultural heritage
Collections care
Preservation (library and archival science)
Archival science

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


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Must have at least two (2) years of aquatic management and programming experience, with a minimum of two (2) years coaching experience. Must possess a current lifeguard certificate. Must have USA swimming coach certification or ability to obtain within the first 3 months of employment, including satisfactory background check. Prefer a college degree in recreation or a related field. Competitive swim background is highly desirable. Must obtain CPO certification and lifeguard instructor certification within first year of employment, if not already held upon hire. Must possess a valid Iowa Driver's License and meet the requirements of the City's motor vehicle policy. Must pass criminal background check, pre-employment physical and drug screen. Must be able to effectively communicate (orally in person and over the telephone and in writing using electronic devices and handwritten) in English with others. Bilingual a plus, but not required.
Performs work under direction to implement and supervise a wide variety of aquatic programming activities within the City of Fort Dodge, including administration and lead coaching for Ames Cyclone Aquatics Club – Ft Dodge year-round swim club.