Case Name: The MIAMI HERALD PUBLISHING COMPANY, a division of Knight-Ridder Newspapers, Inc. (The Miami Herald), Palm Beach Newspapers, Inc. (Palm Beach Post-Times), WTWV, Inc. (WTVX-TV, Channel 34, Fort Pierce), Cape Publications, Inc. (Today) and Vero Beach Press-Journal, Inc. (Vero Beach Press-Journal), Petitioners, v. Honorable Royce R. LEWIS, the State of Florida, and Brooks John Bellay, Respondents
Court: Florida District Court of Appeal
Jurisdiction: Florida
Decision Date: 1980-02-15
Citations: 383 So. 2d 236
Docket Number: No. 79-2557
Parties: The MIAMI HERALD PUBLISHING COMPANY, a division of Knight-Ridder Newspapers, Inc. (The Miami Herald), Palm Beach Newspapers, Inc. (Palm Beach Post-Times), WTWV, Inc. (WTVX-TV, Channel 34, Fort Pierce), Cape Publications, Inc. (Today) and Vero Beach Press-Journal, Inc. (Vero Beach Press-Journal), Petitioners, v. Honorable Royce R. LEWIS, the State of Florida, and Brooks John Bellay, Respondents.
Judges: GLICKSTEIN, J., concurs.
Reporter: Southern Reporter, Second Series
Volume: 383
Pages: 236–245

Head Matter:
The MIAMI HERALD PUBLISHING COMPANY, a division of Knight-Ridder Newspapers, Inc. (The Miami Herald), Palm Beach Newspapers, Inc. (Palm Beach Post-Times), WTWV, Inc. (WTVX-TV, Channel 34, Fort Pierce), Cape Publications, Inc. (Today) and Vero Beach Press-Journal, Inc. (Vero Beach Press-Journal), Petitioners, v. Honorable Royce R. LEWIS, the State of Florida, and Brooks John Bellay, Respondents.
No. 79-2557.
District Court of Appeal of Florida, Fourth District.
Feb. 15, 1980.
On Rehearing May 21, 1980.
Sanford L. Bohrer, Parker D. Thomson and Richard J. Ovelmen of Paul & Thomson, Miami, for petitioners.
William T. McCluan, Melbourne, for petitioner Cape Publications, Inc.
Elton H. Schwarz, Public Defender, and Paul B. Kanarek, Asst. Public Defender, Vero Beach, for respondent Brooks John Bellay.

Opinion:
ON PETITION FOR REVIEW OF ORDER CLOSING PRETRIAL SUPPRESSION HEARING TO THE PRESS AND PUBLIC
LETTS, Judge.
This proceeding, filed by the media under Florida Appellate Rule 9.100(d), protests a lower court ruling which (1) closed a pre-trial hearing on a motion to suppress and (2) sealed the records pertaining to that suppression hearing until the selection and swearing in of the jury at the forthcoming trial. We affirm the former and reverse the latter.
The accused male in this ghastly case, aged 14, is alleged to have had sexual relations with, and then to have murdered, a female child. Preparing for the trial, defense counsel moved for a change of venue because of excessive pre-trial publicity throughout Indian River County (population 56,000). In this regard the defense cited in excess of fifty articles in four newspapers and extensive radio and TV coverage all supposedly featuring lurid details of the alleged offense and reporting confessions by the accused. This motion for a change of venue was denied.
Later filed by the defense was a motion to close the hearing on the suppression of the confessions. The media were notified of this motion to close and were represented at argument thereon, before the trial judge. The state did not oppose the motion. At the conclusion of the argument the trial judge ordered the suppression proceedings closed to the media and public. Thereafter, when the suppression proceedings were concluded the Judge denied the motion to suppress, yet sealed all the court records of the suppression proceeding until commencement of trial. The media seeks reversal of the trial judge's actions.
AS TO THE CLOSING OF THE HEARING
This point involves a classic illustration of the old dilemma: which comes first, the chicken or the egg? In Miami Herald Publishing Company v. McIntosh, 340 So.2d 904, 910 (Fla.1977) our Supreme Court held the press entitled to . . notice and a hearing before any trial court enjoins or limits publication of court proceedings" (emphasis supplied). We followed this mandate in Miami Herald Publishing Company v. State, 363 So.2d 603 (Fla. 4th DCA 1978) as did the trial judge in the case at bar. However the media is far from satisfied with mere notice and a hearing with only argument and no evidence. In the case before us now for instance, the media points out that at the hearing afforded to them ". . .no evidence existed or was presented to support closure of the suppression hearing." Therefore they argue that because the trial judge had not heard or seen the confessions or. any evidence he had no basis to conclude that:
(1) Closure [was] necessary to prevent, a serious and imminent threat to the administration of justice;
(2) that no less restrictive alternative measures [were] available; and
(3) that closure will in fact achieve the Court's purpose. Miami Herald Publishing Company v. State, 363 So.2d 603, 606 (Fla. 4th DCA 1978)
However we fail to comprehend how the trial judge can come to any intelligent conclusion until he has first heard the substance of the evidence sought to be closed. Must the hearing on a motion to suppress be open while the judge considers whether it should be closed? An affirmative answer would make any request for closure moot or require a gag order. On the other hand as this court said in Miami Herald v. State, supra:
the proponents of the closing can argue that there exist cogent and compelling reasons for the closing in the form of imminent personal peril. The media is thereupon reduced to responding that there are not, without any actual knowledge of that which it asserts. We find this unfair to the media yet can offer no cure at the trial level, short of requiring an open rather than a closed hearing and allowing the entering of a subsequent gag order if deemed necessary. Such a solution might be workable, but we cannot implement it at this level. The latest Supreme Court rule on the subject [Fla.App.R. 9.100(d)] specifically envisages proceedings from which the press is excluded. Such would certainly pre-empt us from a major departure from this concept under which we would prefer to include the press at all hearings and then "gag" them if required, (p. 607)
Notwithstanding these misgivings we continue to believe that any alternative must come from the Supreme Court. In the meantime the media's remedy is recourse to this court for a review of the trial judge's actions.
In support of our conclusion we have examined the latest pronouncement about excluding the media from pre-trial suppression of confession hearings, issued by the Supreme Court of the United States in Gannett Company v. DePasquale, 443 U.S. 368, 99 S.Ct. 2898, 61 L.Ed.2d 608 (1979). There can be no question but that Gannett stands for the proposition that the media has no constitutional right of access to a pre-trial suppression of a confession hearing and that in order "to safeguard the due process rights of the accused, a trial judge has an affirmative constitutional duty to minimize the effects of prejudicial pretrial publicity." (p. 2904)
Likewise a careful reading of McIntosh does not suggest to us that the trial judge acted improperly in this case. Accordingly we find no error in the trial judge's closure of the hearing on the motion to suppress.
AS TO SEALING OF THE RECORD UNTIL TRIAL
We are of the opinion that the trial judge erred in sealing the record of the suppression hearing until the selection and swearing in of the jury. We recently held in Miami Herald Publishing Company v. State, 363 So.2d 603 (Fla. 4th DCA 1978) that a record cannot be sealed unless it:
1. Is necessary to prevent a serious and imminent threat to the administration of justice.
2. Can be established that no less restrictive alternative measures are available.
3. Will in fact achieve the Court's purpose.
It is true that in Miami Herald v. State a sentencing, rather than a pre-trial proceeding, was involved. Moreover we are conscious of the impact of Gannett decided later. Nevertheless we hold that these same three criteria should be applied to pre-trial hearings as well, upon the same premise that we have cited before, namely that "what transpires in the court room is public property." Craig v. Harney 331 U.S. 367, 374, 67 S.Ct. 1249, 1254, 91 L.Ed. 1546 (1947).
In its written order sealing the record, the trial judge concluded that all three criteria had been satisfied in the instant case. We disagree as to the second.
As to the first criterion, we agree that there arises a serious and imminent threat to the administration of justice if the printing or reporting of a transcript of a confession is "featured" prior to trial. As the Florida Supreme Court said in Oliver v. State, 250 So.2d 888 (Fla.1971) such featuring amounts to a "trial by newspaper" which is incapable of cure by the voir dire process. This same principle was reiterated in Hoy v. State, 353 So.2d 826 (Fla.1977). However at issue in Oliver and Hoy, supra, was whether a motion for change of venue should have been granted after the alleged prejudicial publicity had already taken place. Here, obviously, the alleged prejudicial publicity has not yet taken place since the record of the suppression hearing remains sealed and there is no evidence that the details of any alleged confessions have otherwise been made public. Nevertheless, it could not-be unreasonable for the trial court to here conclude, in the light of the substantial pre-trial publicity which has already occurred, that the details of any confessions sought to be suppressed would also be given substantial coverage in the local media raising the possibility of the result in Oliver and Hoy.
Thus since it appears that the trial court's purpose in the case at bar was to avoid a repetition of the publicity already aired and to avoid the printing of lurid details of the confessions, we also cannot say that the closure did not also satisfy the third criterion.
Notwithstanding the apparent satisfaction of two out of the three of the criterion adopted, we cannot agree that it has been demonstrated that there were no less restrictive measures available.
In Gannett the United States Supreme Court pointed out on pages 2904 and 2905 why closure, as distinct from a less restrictive measure, is justified.
This Court has long recognized that adverse publicity can endanger the ability of a defendant to receive a fair trial. E. g., Sheppard v. Maxwell, 384 U.S. 333, 86 S.Ct. 1507, 16 L.Ed.2d 600; Irvin v. Dowd, 366 U.S. 717, 81 S.Ct. 1639, 6 L.Ed.2d 751; Marshall v. United States, 360 U.S. 310, 79 S.Ct. 1171, 3 L.Ed.2d 1250. Cf. Estes v. Texas, 381 U.S. 532, 85 S.Ct. 1628, 14 L.Ed.2d 543. To safeguard the due process rights of the accused, a trial judge has an affirmative constitutional duty to minimize the effects of prejudicial pretrial publicity. Sheppard v. Maxwell, supra. And because of the Constitution's pervasive concern for these due process rights, a trial judge may surely take protective measures even when they are not strictly and inescapably necessary.
Publicity concerning pretrial suppression hearings such as the one involved in the present case poses special risks of unfairness. The whole purpose of such hearings is to screen out unreliable or illegally obtained evidence and insure that this evidence does not become known to the jury. Cf. Jackson v. Denno, 378 U.S. 368, 84 S.Ct. 1774, 12 L.Ed.2d 908. Publicity concerning the proceedings at a pretrial hearing, however, could influence public opinion against a defendant and inform potential jurors of inculpatory information wholly inadmissible at the actual trial.
The danger of publicity concerning pretrial suppression hearings is particularly acute, because it may be difficult to measure with any degree of certainty the effects of such publicity on the fairness of the trial. After the commencement of the trial itself, ' inadmissible prejudicial information about a defendant can be kept from a jury by a variety of means. When such information is publicized during a pretrial proceeding, however, it may never be altogether kept from potential jurors. Closure of pretrial proceedings is often one of the most effective methods that a trial judge can employ to attempt to insure that the fairness of a trial will not be jeopardized by the dissemination of such information throughout the community before the trial itself has even begun. Cf. Rideau v. Louisiana, 373 U.S. 723, 83 S.Ct. 1417, 10 L.Ed.2d 663. (pp. 2904, 2905) (footnotes omitted)
Clearly the danger foreseen in Gannett is based on the hazard of potential jurors having knowledge of inculpatory matters wholly inadmissible at the actual trial. Such a hazard is totally absent here because the judge ruled that the confession would be admitted. Thus the jury will hear the confession in any event.
We realize that the problem of Oliver and Hoy still remains in the case at bar but, under the circumstances of this case, find that there are less restrictive measures available than a sealing of the record until trial, for example a change in venue. Apparently defense counsel in the case at hand agrees because at oral argument before this court he declared a preference for a venue change rather than a continued sealing of the record. Yet the defense contends that sealing remains vital because the trial court has already denied a motion for a change of venue. However that motion denied was predicated only on publicity up to the time of that hearing and could not include publicity arising out of the suppression proceedings not yet published.
A change of venue is itself a drastic measure to be invoked only if the defendant cannot receive a fair trial in the local community. Hence whether such a change in venue will prove necessary in the instant case will depend on how the media treats the record which we here unseal. If the media "features" the confessions in the manner condemned by Oliver and Hoy, then the trial court will have no alternative but to grant a venue change. However a decision on that is premature as of this writing.
As we have already said the granting of a change of venue is a major step which involves considerable difficulty, more delay to the state and a continuation of severe emotional trauma for the defendant as well as enormous expense ultimately to be borne in large part by the taxpayer. Such considerations may at first glance, make this trial court's choice appear reasonable, i. e., a short delay in disclosing the suppression proceedings versus the lengthy delay and great expense of a change of venue. However, it has been previously determined that although a defendant's right to a fair trial is paramount to the public's right to simultaneously know what occurs in a judicial proceeding, it is only when the accused's rights cannot be safeguarded by some reasonable alternative, that a judicial record should be sealed, Miami Herald v. State, supra.
We do not foreclose the possibility that there will be cases of such notoriety that a change of venue will not suffice. Thus our conclusion here is expressly limited to the circumstances of this case.
We have considered Judge Antead's special concurrence expressing concern that Gannett may have overruled Miami Herald Publishing Company v. State, at any rate so far as pretrial proceedings are concerned. However, for the very reasons set forth hereafter by Judge Anstead, we are convinced that Gannett does not preclude what we have here determined. Accordingly, we see no reason for further delay in unsealing this record.
AFFIRMED IN PART, REVERSED IN PART AND REMANDED WITH DIRECTIONS TO THE TRIAL JUDGE TO UNSEAL THE RECORD. .
GLICKSTEIN, J., concurs.
ANSTEAD, J., concurs specially with opinion.
. Although surmountable in the case at bar, the media did not see fit to furnish us with a transcript of this hearing. Appellate decisions are often necessarily grounded upon a record and lack of same is a fatal omission in many appeals. We also note we were not favored with examples of the alleged excessive pre-trial publicity.
. We note that this cited case involved a sentencing proceeding not a pre-trial proceeding. However we see no reason why the samé criteria should not apply to both as we shall discuss hereafter.
. See also the language of Appellate Rule 9.100(d) (1978) which refers to trial court orders excluding the press:
"A petition to review an order excluding the press or public from access to any proceeding, any part of a proceeding . . .
. The defendant here claims no right to trial under the 6th Amendment in the district where the crime was committed. See Allegrezza v. Superior Court of Alameda County, 47 Cal.App.3d 948, 121 Cal.Rptr. 245 (1975).
. Indeed we cannot be certain that details of the confession involved will not be featured in the locality to which the case is transferred, if transferral becomes necessary.