Television cameras have become “the equivalent of background noise” in high-profile cases, Abramson says.

“We’re mistrusting ourselves to think we just collapse before the cameras,” Abramson says. “We’re not that weak of will.”

Guthrie says that the CourtTV camera has had an “unobtrusive” role in the Pring-Wilson trial.

“In O.J., the cameras affected it because you had a judge who wasn’t strong and didn’t run a tight ship,” Guthrie says. But she says that Regina Quinlan, the judge in the Pring-Wilson trial, “doesn’t let media run roughshod over the proceedings.”

While Guthrie reports on the Pring-Wilson case from Cambridge, her colleagues in California are providing CourtTV with non-stop coverage of the Scott Peterson murder trial, even though cameras aren’t allowed to televise the proceedings.

In that case, Guthrie says, “instead of people being able to hear the evidence for themselves, they hear it filtered through reporters. And I don’t think that’s better.”

CHARGING UP

High-profile cases may sometimes encourage prosecutors “to play up charges,” Abramson says.

The Middlesex County district attorney’s office has garnered criticism for seeking a first-degree murder conviction against Pring-Wilson instead of lesser charges of second-degree murder or manslaughter.

Abramson, a former Middlesex County assistant district attorney, says that Massachusetts law requires prosecutors to prove either “deliberate premeditation” or “extreme atrocity or cruelty” to warrant a first degree verdict.

“It’s certainly the case that in most street brawls, ‘murder one’ is not sought,” he says.

However, Abramson says the Middlesex prosecutors in the Pring-Wilson trial aren’t pursuing a “charging-up strategy,” but rather are following the letter of Massachusetts law.

“The wording of the statute says that the jury shall find the degree of murder,” Abramson says. “Prosecutors often rely on that to say they should just generally charge all the way up and leave the jury to sort out...first versus second degree.”

Meanwhile, Guthrie says CourtTV viewers are “really polarized” by the legal issues at play in the case, with some clamoring for Pring-Wilson to be locked up for life, and others calling for his immediate release.

If convicted of first-degree murder, Pring-Wilson would face life in prison without the possibility of parole.