Opinion ID: 2085790
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Exclusion of the Public is an Element of Violation of the Right to a Public Trial

Text: Whether phrased in constitutional or statutory terms, however, Williams' claim suffers from a basic flaw. Both a common sense reading of exclusion, and, more importantly, the cases interpreting the public trial right, conceive of an exclusion as an affirmative act specifically barring some or all members of the public from attending a proceeding. Waller, 467 U.S. at 39, 104 S.Ct. at 2212 (closure of suppression hearing); United States v. Al-Smadi, 15 F.3d 153, 154 (10th Cir.1994) (denial of a defendant's Sixth Amendment right to a public trial requires some affirmative act by the trial court meant to exclude persons from the courtroom); Hackett, 266 Ind. at 109, 360 N.E.2d at 1003 (closure of proceedings to public for testimony of one witness). This simple observation renders the above outline of the law of public access to criminal proceedings largely superfluous because, quite simply, the trial court did not exclude a soul. The security procedures required that each person who was unknown to the officer at the door show identification and sign in. Neither requirement actively excludes anyone. The identification requirement introduced a minor procedural hurdle to gaining admittance to the trial by demanding the production of some form of identification, which is an item readily available to the general public. Williams does not argue that this requirement made it physically impossible for anyone to attend. Specifically, Williams does not contend that there were people who could not produce the required identification because they had no way to identify themselves. Rather, he argues that the public trial right was implicated because of what can be deemed a constructive exclusion of the public. Although he does not state exactly how the procedures constructively worked an exclusion, presumably his argument is that because many of his supporters were Ghetto Boy members and, as conceded by Marbley's counsel, may have had prior encounters with law enforcement they were not eager to leave their names at the door for possible scrutiny by law enforcement officials. At the extreme, perhaps some were wanted fugitives. At a minimum they may have been persons who feared the consequences that a potential background check would entail. The security precautions, so the argument goes, constructively established a bar to Williams' supporters and thereby deprived Williams of his right to a public trial. Indeed, at trial co-defendant Gregory used the word intimidation to describe the effect the procedures had on the relevant members of the public. But the defendant's right does not protect against constructive exclusion. It requires some showing that the court, by order or otherwise, physically prevented the public from attending. Al-Smadi, 15 F.3d at 154. Even if it is true that some of Williams' supporters decided not to attend the trial because of the security procedures, Williams' right to a public trial is not implicated because there is no evidence, or even an allegation, as to how this affected the fairness of the proceedings or any of the objectives of the Sixth Amendment. There is no showing or allegation that the people who did attend affected the result in any way. [8] In sum, this simply is not a case of partial or total closure of the proceedings to the public and so the constitutional right to a public trial is not implicated by the procedures as they were used in this case. [9]