A high-profile trial can quickly change the demands placed on a courthouse. The building must continue supporting its normal operations while accommodating larger crowds, heightened security, extensive media coverage, prolonged proceedings, and additional technology.
A high-profile case can emerge in any jurisdiction. The National Center for State Courts (NCSC) identifies several types, including cases involving celebrities, public officials, notorious crimes, community controversy, or intense media interest. The ongoing Lindsay Clancy trial in Plymouth, Massachusetts, is a recent example. The case has drawn substantial public and media attention, while the proceedings are expected to last weeks and involve emotionally difficult evidence.
A courthouse cannot be designed around every extraordinary case that might someday walk through its doors. However, courts can anticipate the challenges such a case may create. Through adaptable design, appropriate infrastructure, and advance planning, courts can make a temporary surge in activity more manageable without compromising routine operations or the integrity of the judicial process.
More People, More Activity
The most visible change may be the number of people arriving at the courthouse. A high-profile case can attract spectators who would not otherwise attend court, along with local and national media. Increased attendance places additional demand on entrances, screening stations, elevators, restrooms, courtroom seating, and public circulation.
Media organizations may require workspace, vehicle staging, power, connectivity, and locations for interviews and live reports. Demonstrators, supporters, and spectators may assemble outside before the courthouse opens. What begins as increased attendance can quickly affect the building, its grounds, surrounding sidewalks, parking, and routine public access.
Security may require additional personnel, screening equipment, controlled access points, credentials, or temporary barriers. Courts must consider how these measures affect access to other courtrooms and offices. The challenge is not simply accommodating more people. It is maintaining normal courthouse operations while controlling how people enter, wait, move, and interact throughout the trial.
Users Experience the Building Differently
Each group relies on the courthouse in a different way, and the pressures of a high-profile trial can make existing space limitations more consequential.
Jurors may face prolonged service, public attention, restrictions on their movement, and concerns about privacy or safety. Although 12 jurors generally deliberate in a felony trial, courts may seat additional jurors as alternates, particularly when a trial is expected to be lengthy. The courthouse may therefore need to support a working jury group of 14 to 16 people. The jury box and jury deliberation room should accommodate that larger group, while protected circulation, waiting, dining, and arrival arrangements can reduce jurors’ exposure to the public and media.
Witnesses may spend considerable time waiting before testifying. A comfortable, controlled waiting room away from heavily traveled public areas can limit contact with opposing witnesses, jurors, spectators, and reporters. Clearly defined routes to and from the courtroom can also reduce unnecessary stress.
Attorneys need private space to meet with clients, prepare witnesses, organize evidence, and confer with colleagues. Without appropriate conference rooms, these activities may spill into public corridors and courtroom seating areas. Court staff must coordinate all of these needs while continuing to support the court’s routine business.
The physical environment cannot eliminate the inherent demands of a high-profile trial, but it can prevent the building from adding unnecessary difficulty to an already challenging experience.
Design One Courtroom for Exceptional Demands
In new construction, it may be prudent, where size and budget permit, to provide at least one larger courtroom capable of supporting multi-party, prolonged, or technology-intensive trials. This need not be a dedicated “high-profile courtroom.” The same features can support complex civil cases, multi-defendant criminal proceedings, capital cases, ceremonial events, and other exceptional uses.
A high-capacity courtroom may include:
The courtroom should support routine proceedings most of the time while retaining the flexibility to accommodate exceptional cases when necessary.
Provide Real Waiting and Overflow Space
Waiting space outside courtrooms is often overlooked. Wider corridors may improve circulation, but they are not necessarily waiting areas. When seating is unavailable, spectators, witnesses, attorneys, and family members stand along walls or gather around courtroom doors. This can narrow circulation routes, interfere with accessibility, expose private conversations, and make security more difficult.
Purpose-designed courtroom waiting should provide seating without obstructing the required path of travel. It should also offer space for wheelchairs, clear views of courtroom entrances and docket displays, and sufficient separation between opposing or emotionally charged groups.
Courts should distinguish between waiting and queuing. A high-profile trial may require both a managed queue for admission and a separate area where admitted spectators can wait. In an existing courthouse, a nearby conference, training, or multipurpose room can sometimes become a temporary controlled waiting area.
No courtroom can accommodate unlimited public interest. A second courtroom or multipurpose space can serve as an overflow room with a secure audio and video feed from the main courtroom. It should be treated as an extension of the courtroom, with reliable technology, accessible seating, security, and enforceable decorum rules. Courts must also plan how sealed proceedings, protected testimony, or restricted exhibits will be removed from the feed.
Plan for Media, Power, and Technology
The technology demands associated with a highly visible trial can overwhelm a courthouse designed for ordinary use. During the O.J. Simpson trial, extensive media equipment strained the courthouse’s electrical capacity. Power strips and cables filled portions of the courtroom and required care simply to move through the space.
Modern planning can prevent a similar situation. Courtrooms that may host complex proceedings should have adequate electrical circuits, floor boxes, data connections, protected cable routes, and designated equipment locations. A court-controlled media patch panel can distribute audio and video to multiple outlets without allowing every organization to install separate equipment in the courtroom.
Before a high-profile trial begins, facilities and IT personnel should evaluate:
Courts can require advance equipment declarations and compatibility testing while prohibiting unapproved extension cords, power strips, lighting, hotspots, and recording devices.
A designated exterior media area can keep much of the production equipment outside the courthouse. Broadcast vehicles can be assigned locations with power, connectivity, parking, and safe cable routes that do not obstruct courthouse entrances or sidewalks. A court-approved camera (pool camera) can provide a shared video feed to participating media organizations, limiting the amount of equipment entering the courtroom.
Plan for the Courthouse Grounds
Crowds do not begin at the courtroom door. Spectators may arrive hours before the building opens. Reporters conduct interviews outside, broadcast trucks occupy parking areas, and supporters or demonstrators gather near entrances.
Courts should identify public assembly areas, media locations, spectator queues, and vehicle staging areas before the trial. These areas should not block accessible routes, employee entrances, emergency access, or routine courthouse traffic.
The plan may also establish rules for overnight camping, amplified sound, tents, generators, supplemental lighting, signs, and media interviews. Separate arrival routes may be necessary for jurors, witnesses, parties, judges, and in-custody defendants. Weather contingencies are also important when people may wait outside for extended periods.
Build the Playbook in Advance
Physical flexibility is most effective when paired with organizational preparedness. NCSC recommends that the trial judge establish a high-profile case team with expertise in court administration, security, jury operations, media relations, and information technology.
That team should determine:
Courts should publish admission procedures, prohibited items, media rules, parking information, schedules, and decorum requirements through a dedicated webpage or public notice. Clear information can reduce uncertainty and help security personnel enforce the rules consistently.
Recent trials demonstrate the value of these measures. During Depp v. Heard, Fairfax County used wristbands to manage spectator admission, established an overflow courtroom, limited video coverage to pool cameras, designated media and public assembly areas, and published clear access and security rules. The lesson is that existing facilities can often accommodate exceptional proceedings when courts repurpose space, control access, manage technology, and communicate expectations in advance.
High-profile trials will always be exceptions. They bring demands that may not have been predicted when a courthouse was designed, and it would be impractical to dedicate permanent space to every possible scenario.
Courts can, however, prepare for the pressures an extraordinary case may create. A larger and more adaptable courtroom, a jury deliberation room designed for alternates, private conference and witness spaces, genuine courtroom waiting, overflow capability, sufficient technology infrastructure, and a carefully developed operating plan can allow a courthouse to absorb a temporary increase in activity.
The goal is not to design a courthouse around a single exceptional trial. It is to provide enough adaptable capacity and organizational readiness to accommodate the exception without compromising the court’s everyday work or the integrity of justice.
Readiness Checklist for a High-Profile Trial