Atlanta Newspapers, Inc. v. Grimes

• Decision Date: 05 May 1960
• Docket Number: No. 20851,20851
• Citation: 216 Ga. 74,114 S.E.2d 421
• Parties: ATLANTA NEWSPAPERS, INC., et al. v. T. R. GRIMES, Sheriff, et al.
• Court: Georgia Supreme Court

Page 421

114 S.E.2d 421

216 Ga. 74

ATLANTA NEWSPAPERS, INC., et al. v. T. R. GRIMES, Sheriff, et al.

No. 20851.

Supreme Court of Georgia.

May 5, 1960.

Rehearing Denied May 18, 1960.

Syllabus by the Court

1. No freedoms, including the freedoms of speech and press, are absolute.

2. Under Code § 24-104, every court has power to preserve and enforce order in its immediate presence, and as near thereto as is necessary to prevent interruption, disturbance, or hindrance to its proceedings, and to control, in furtherance of justice, the conduct of its officers and all other persons connected with a judicial proceeding before it, in every matter appertaining thereto.

3. 'Liberty of the press is subordinate to the independence of the judiciary and the proper administration of justice.'

4. Courts have the power to determine the manner in which they shall operate in order to administer justice with dignity and decorum, and in such manner as shall be conducive to fair and impartial trials and ascertainment of the truth uninfluenced by extraneous matters or distractions, and may stop conduct of representatives of the press in any field of activity interfering with orderly conduct of court procedure or creating distractions interfering therewith.

5. Discretion in regulating and controlling the business of the court is necessarily confided to the judge, who is invested with a wide discretion, in the exercise of which this court should never interfere unless it is made to appear that wrong or oppression has resulted from its abuse.

6. Under the facts of the present case, this court cannot hold that the trial judge abused the discretion vested in him by law in prohibiting the taking of pictures or recording of statements, on the streets or sidewalks adjacent to the courthouse, of any party, defendant, prosecutor, attorney, witness, juror, spectator, or other participant in or at any trial held in that particular division of the court until it shall have been completed, and all persons in attendance thereon shall have retired from the courthouse and adjacent sidewalks and public streets, and thereafter shall have dispersed, the order further providing that it shall in no wise prevent the press or public from taking shorthand or longhand accounts of all proceedings.

This case comes to this court because there was an equal division of the Judges of the Court of Appeals as to the judgment that should be rendered, Gardner, P. J., Townsend, and Nichols, JJ., being for affirmance, and Felton, C. J., Carlisle and Bell, JJ., being for reversal.

On November 3, 1958, Hon. Durwood T. Pye, one of the Judges of the Superior Court of Fulton County, entered an order with respect to all proceedings in his division of the court, paragraph 3 thereof being as follows:

'Additionally, the following, to wit: No photograph of any party to any trial or of any defendant, prosecutor, attorney, witness, juror, spectator, or other participant in or at any trial, shall be taken at any place in the courthouse building, on the courthouse steps, or on the adjacent sidewalks and public streets. Nothing done or said by any such person at any such place shall be recorded by any television instrument, moving-picture camera or other instrument, sound-scriber, tape recorder, wire recorder, or any other recording device or equipment. This Rule 3rd shall apply at all times during trials, and in respect of a particular trial, until it shall have been completed and all persons in attendance thereon shall have retired from the courthouse and adjacent sidewalks and public streets, and thereafter shall have dispersed.'

On November 19, 1958, Atlanta Newspapers, Inc., a corporation engaged in publishing The Atlanta Journal and The Atlanta Constitution, Marion Johnson, a photographer employed by Atlanta Newspapers, Inc., and Georgia Press Association, a corporation of Fulton County, Georgia, organized to promote, protect, and advance the interests of its members consisting of about two hundred newspaper publishers, and the publisher of a monthly magazine, as petitioners, brought their petition against T. Ralph Grimes, as Sheriff of Fulton County, and the State of Georgia, by Paul Webb, Solicitor General of the Atlanta Judicial Circuit, as defendants, which petition was also served upon the Attorney-General of Georgia, in which they allege that paragraph 3 of the order above quoted is erroneous and invalid, in that its enforcement denies to petitioners and other members of the public the liberty of speech and liberty of press guaranteed by article I, sectionI, paragraph XV of the Constitution of the State of Georgia (Code, Ann., § 2-115), which provides that 'No law shall ever be passed to curtail, or restrain the liberty of speech, or of the press; any person may speak, write and publish his sentiments, on all subjects, being responsible for the abuse of that liberty'; and denies to them the right of freedom of the press and fairly using the press, in violation of section I of the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States (Code § 1-801), which provides that 'Congress shall make no law * * * abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press'; and denies to petitioners the benefits of due process of law and deprives them of liberty and property without due process of law, and deprives them of equal protection of the law, in violation of the provisions of Section I of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States (Code § 1-815), which provides, among other things, that 'No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.' They prayed for process; that the court declare paragraph 3 of the order invalid; that the sheriff has no duties to perform with reference to the enforcement such order; that the petitioners are not barred from committing the acts prohibited by said order, and for general relief.

The case came on for trial before and was tried by the Judge who issued the order and who held that the petition was properly brought as a proceeding to modify, vacate, or set aside a rule prescribed by the court for the conduct of the business before it. The stipulations of fact, the evidence introduced, and the order and judgment of the trial court are all set out in the bill of exceptions, consisting of 250 pages. The final order and judgment showing exhaustive research on the part of the trial judge, and a learned discussion of the law dealing with the freedom of the press, freedom of speech, the right of the courts to prescribe and enforce rules looking to the orderly administration of justice, concludes with the following judgment:

'The court holds that plaintiffs' contentions have no merit. The court, upon full, careful and deliberate reconsideration of the legality, desirability and propriety of said Rule Part 3rd holds that said Rule Part 3rd is lawful, desirable and proper in every respect, and it is continued in force,' and judgment is rendered against the plaintiffs for costs. To this judgment the plaintiffs except, it being stated on page 86 of the brief of counsel for plaintiffs in error: 'Plaintiffs have taken exception only to that part of the order which bars the taking of pictures of spectators and other persons not in custody of the court, on the streets and sidewalks surrounding the courthouse.'

B. P. Gambrell, John E. Dougherty, Atlanta, Stephens, Fortson, Bentley & Griffin, Athens, for plaintiff in error.

Harold Sheats, Griffin Patrick, Jr., Atlanta, for defendant in error.

HAWKINS, Justice (after stating the foregoing facts).

1-5. Many questions are dealt with in the opinion and judgment of the trial judge, consisting of 125 pages, and in the brief of counsel for the plaintiffs in error, consisting of 142 pages, which are not directly involved in the present case, such as the redress of libel, the power of the courts to punish for contempt, and the individual's right of privacy.

That the courts of this State have consistently sought to uphold and enforce the constitutional provisions relied upon by the plaintiffs in error is conclusively established, we think, by the decisions in the following cases: McGill v. State of Georgia, 209 Ga. 500, 74 S.E.2d 78; Waters v. Fleetwood, 212 Ga. 161, 91 S.E.2d 344; Ledger-Enquirer Co. v. Brown, 213 Ga. 538, 100 S.E.2d 166; Townsend v. State, 54 Ga.App. 627, 188 S.E. 560; Ledger-Enquirer Co. v. Brown, 214 Ga. 422, 105 S.E.2d 229. We heartily subscribe to the statement in some of the decisions to the effect that the function of publicity in the form of newspaper reporting and comment as 'an effective restraint on possible abuse of judicial power,' is one of the fundamental safeguards of a free society. New York Post Corporation v. Leibowitz, 2 N.Y.2d 677, 682, 163 N.Y.S.2d 409, 143 N.E.2d 256; In re Oliver, 333 U.S. 257, 270, 68 S.Ct. 499, 92 L.Ed. 682; Times-Picayune Publishing Co. v. United States, 345 U.S. 594, 73 S.Ct. 872, 97 L.Ed. 1277; Pennekamp v. Florida, 328 U.S. 331, 66 S.Ct. 1029, 90 L.Ed. 1295.

We also recognize that freedom of the press means freedom to gather news, write, publish, and circulate it, and that gathering news embraces photographing the news, printing the photographs, and reproducing of the photographs in the finished newspapers; and as was held in Ex parte Sturm, 152 Md. 114, 123, 136 A. 312, 316, 51 A.L.R....