A courtroom might not be your favorite place to be, however, many people around the world will probably enter in one of these rooms at lest once in their lifetime. You might think that using Twitter in a courtroom is forbidden, but many judges are allowing reporters or other people to tweet during trials.

But why wouldn’t it be allowed? Because jurors might be influenced, at least this is what two lawyers said when reporter Ron Sylvester used Twitter during a trial. However, U.S. District Judge J. Thomas Marten said that he is allowed to do that as jurors are “instructed” not to read newspaper, online reports, or to watch news on TV.

What’s so special about it? Well, this happened during this week in a federal system, and tweeting from federal courtrooms when criminal cases are investigated is a very, very rare practice. Reporter Ron Sylvester has been using Twitter to report from a courtroom for a year, but this is the first time he tweeted from a federal courtroom.

“You either trust your jurors to live with the admonishment, or you don’t,” said Judge J. Thomas Marten.

Here are a few of Sylvester’s tweets:

• “Judge Marten is talking to reluctant witness in chambers with a court reporter transcribing the conversation.”
• “The witness who was yelling in the hallway earlier has not returned to the courthouse.”
• “Defendants are chatting and laughing among themselves.”
• “Exhibits are shown electronically. Every juror has a monitor in the box. There is a monitor at each lawyer’s table and one for the gallery.”

Across the country, tech-savvy federal judges are becoming increasingly receptive to live courtroom media coverage using emerging technologies. Such coverage from journalists reporting from trials in state courts is already common.

Everybody backs the idea of the reporter, even the father of one of the defendants who lives in Houston and he is unable to attend to his son’s trial so Sylvester said that Twitter “does improve public access to the courts.”

Twitter received further praises from Judge Marten who said that “the more we can do to open the process to the public, the greater the public understanding – the more legitimacy the public system will have in the eyes of the public.”

I’m not very familiar with federal courts, but I don’t think tweeting from a courtroom should be banned. I hope that there are many judges who will support Twitter and hopefully the public will keep an eye on what’s happening during a trial.