Opinion ID: 390302
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Risk of Infringement of Defendants' Rights to Fair Trial

Text: 59 The most serious factor considered by the district court in its conclusion that the tapes should not be released was its finding that release of the tapes at this time would seriously jeopardize the fair trial rights of the defendants. 501 F.Supp. at 861. Although the trials of Schwartz and Jannotti had been completed, the court found that the possibility of a retrial was not purely speculative and referred to the fact that the initial trials of Johanson and Criden had not yet taken place in this district. The court reasoned that despite the vast amount of publicity which had already been accorded to this case, there remains a possibility that an untainted jury may yet be obtainable, but found that the heightened publicity which would attend broadcasting of the actual tapes, and the vastly enhanced impact of the tapes themselves (would make it) much less likely that a truly impartial jury could be obtained for the future trials. Id. 60 After the district court's decision on October 22, 1980, several relevant events have intervened. We have been advised that the government has filed motions with the district court seeking dismissal of the indictments against both defendant Criden and Johanson, and that these motions to dismiss are unopposed. 9 Although no action on these motions has yet been taken by Judge Fullam, and we express no opinion with respect to them, we are, of course, aware that such unopposed motions are rarely denied, and therefore a future trial against Criden and Johanson in this district on these charges, while not impossible, is unlikely. Furthermore, on November 26, 1980, Judge Fullam with great reluctance set aside the convictions of both Schwartz and Jannotti after concluding that the evidence at trial established entrapment as a matter of law, and, in the alternative, that the defendants were entitled to judgments of acquittal on the ground of governmental overreaching amounting to a violation of due process of law or on the ground that the circumstances relied upon to establish federal jurisdiction over the offenses charged were artificially created by the government in an attempt to exceed the proper scope of federal law enforcement. United States v. Jannotti, 501 F.Supp. at 1205. 61 Judge Fullam's ruling with regard to Schwartz and Jannotti does not obviate all possibility of a retrial. That ruling has been appealed by the government. If it is not sustained, defendants will undoubtedly seek to have their jury conviction overturned for alleged trial errors. Thus, there remains the possibility that Schwartz and Jannotti may have to be tried again in this district, and the effect of rebroadcast of the audio and videotapes on a possible future jury cannot be summarily dismissed. 62 Considerations of the effect of publicity on a jury are ordinarily matters on which the trial court's judgment is entitled to considerable deference by an appellate court. The trial court has already supervised the selection of one jury and any particular problems which the news coverage in this highly publicized matter created for the selection process would have come to the trial court's attention. Therefore, if the trial court had already experienced difficulty in jury selection, we would be faced with an actual rather than conjectural factor militating against release of the tapes for rebroadcast. However, the trial court's experience was the contrary. The court stated that while virtually all of the prospective jurors called in the Schwartz and Jannotti case had heard or read about the case, most were able to state, truthfully in my view, that their awareness of the case was somewhat vague, and that they had formed no lasting conclusions concerning the guilt or innocence of the defendants. 501 F.Supp. at 861. Accordingly, the danger to defendants' fair trial rights on a possible retrial is not based on the trial court's experience in this case, but rather on its conjecture about possible future difficulties. In fact, other district judges sitting in related Abscam trials have also concluded that the publicity which would attend release of Abscam tapes would not rise to such a level as to imperil defendants' due process rights. See United States v. Thompson, 80 Crim. 291 (E.D.N.Y. Nov. 10, 1980) (order granting applications to copy); United States v. Carpentier, 80 Crim. 102 (E.D.N.Y. Dec. 1, 1980) (order granting applications to copy). See also United States v. Haldeman, 559 F.2d 31 (D.C. Cir. 1976), cert. denied, 431 U.S. 933, 97 S.Ct. 2641, 53 L.Ed.2d 250 (1977) (Watergate defendant). 63 We appreciate the sensitivity with which Judge Fullam approached the fair trial issue, since it demonstrates an acute awareness that defendants' due process right to a fair trial is the linchpin of our criminal justice system. Nonetheless, we must distinguish between those situations where there is hypothetical prejudice and those where it can be demonstrated that there has been actual prejudice caused by publicity. Compare Chandler v. Florida with Estes v. Texas, 381 U.S. 532, 85 S.Ct. 1628, 14 L.Ed.2d 543 (1965). 64 As the Court noted in the Chandler case, (a)ny criminal case that generates a great deal of publicity presents some risks that the publicity may compromise the right of the defendant to a fair trial. -- U.S. at --, 101 S.Ct. at 809. There are, however, certain practical considerations that must be taken into account before finding that the possible effect of such publicity in a possible retrial warrants denial of access to evidence already introduced. Effectively, this would result in denial of the right to copy at a time when the issues remained a matter of public interest. Thus the educational and informational value of public observation of the evidence would never be available at a meaningful time. See United States v. Mitchell, 551 F.2d at 1261-62. 65 The decision of the Supreme Court in Chandler suggests that the appropriate course to follow when the spectre of prejudicial publicity is raised is not automatically to deny access but to rely primarily on the curative device of voir dire examination at the time of any possible retrial. The Court stated: 66 Over the years, courts have developed a range of curative devices to prevent publicity about a trial from infecting jury deliberations. See, e. g., Nebraska Free Press Association v. Stuart, 427 U.S. 539, 563-565, 96 S.Ct. 2791, 2804-2806, 49 L.Ed.2d 683 (1975). 67 An absolute constitutional ban on broadcast coverage of trials cannot be justified simply because there is a danger that, in some cases, prejudicial broadcast accounts of pretrial and trial events may impair the ability of jurors to decide the issue of guilt or innocence uninfluenced by extraneous matter. The risk of juror prejudice in some cases does not justify an absolute ban on news coverage of trials by the printed media; so also the risk of such prejudice does not warrant an absolute constitutional ban on all broadcast coverage. A case attracts a high level of public attention because of its intrinsic interest to the public and the manner of reporting the event. The risk of juror prejudice is present in any publication of a trial, but the appropriate safeguard against such prejudice is the defendant's right to demonstrate that the media's coverage of this case be it printed or broadcast compromised the ability of the particular jury that heard the case to adjudicate fairly. 68 -- U.S. at --, 101 S.Ct. at 809. The district court here gave inadequate weight to the use of voir dire, the traditional method of protecting defendants from the adverse effects of publicity. 69