Opinion ID: 3010393
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Must the District Court Redact the Briefs

Text: and Hold a Two-Part Hearing? The newspapers concede that they have no right of access to grand jury material as such. They contend, however, that the district court would only be justified in sealing the briefs and the hearing in their entirety if the court made particularized findings that the hearing and briefs would concern only grand jury material. In other words, the newspapers insist that they seek access only to _________________________________________________________________ disclosure of the report to third parties, a number of courts have reasoned that, in addition to the fact that PSRs have traditionally been confidential and only made available to the defendant in recent decades, public disclosure . . . of the presentence report . . . would constitute a positive hindrance of the sentencing process and ongoing criminal investigations. Corbitt, 879 F.2d at 229. We ourselves have observed that [t]here is a general presumption that the courts will not grant third parties access to the presentence reports of other individuals. United States v. Blanco, 884 F.2d 1577, 1578 (3d Cir. 1988). Based on this case law, the parties opposing access contend that the newspapers do not have a presumptive right of access to the sentencing memorandum, or to the briefs or hearing, which might disclose the information contained in the PSR. As they point out, sentencing memoranda typically include the same classes of sensitive information as are included in presentence reports, such as criminal history and characteristics, and not infrequently, as in this case, allegations of criminal conduct against uncharged individuals. There is considerable force to this argument. There are, of course, countervailing considerations. In the wake of the revolution in criminal sentencing spawned by the Sentencing Reform Act, 18 U.S.C. § 3551 et seq., and the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines, which have largely transformed sentencing into an adversary proceeding during which the sentencing judge makes record fact findings about the material sentencing factors, it would seem that significant portions of the PSR need (and should) no longer be confidential. But even if that were so, the matters at issue here may well be outside the ambit of any such precept (assuming it should be adopted). We leave this question to the district court. If the court determines, upon resolving the 6(e) question, that all, or aspects, of the briefs and the transcripts of the hearing should be disclosed to the public, it should also consider whether Rule 32 or related case law establishing the confidentiality of PSRs would prohibit the disclosure of that material. 23 the nonsecret portions of the proceeding before the district court. They make two related contentions. First, they point out that the district court made no findings that secret grand jury material would actually be considered during the proceedings. Second, they point out that both Rule 6(e)(5) and 6(e)(6) specifically provide that the hearing and materials can be closed only to the extent necessary to prevent disclosure of matters occurring before a grand jury. According to the newspapers, even if the district court can justifiably seal part of the briefs and the hearing, the court must exercise this authority narrowly, and only seal the particular aspects of the briefs and the hearing that warrant secrecy. Under these circumstances, the newspapers contend, the district court erred in sealing the briefs and the hearing in their entirety and should, instead, have redacted the briefs and held a two-part hearing. We disagree. The government has represented that material it concedes to contain grand jury secrets will be disclosed in order to aid the district court's deliberations. That virtually concludes the issue. But we would have to reject the newspapers' contention even without this representation. The briefs and the hearing to which the newspapers seek access concern the exact issue that the newspapers want the district court to determine now: whether 6(e) material is implicated. More specifically, although the newspapers seek access only to the aspects of the proceedings that the district court determines to be nonsecret, the district court simply cannot determine what material is secret and what can be disclosed to the public without determining whether the sentencing memorandum contains Rule 6(e) material. Yet that decision, in turn, cannot be made without the benefit of the briefs and in particular, without the benefit of oral argument. At such a hearing, according to the parties opposing access, the parties will make legal arguments about the scope of Rule 6(e), as well as explain the fabric of the grand jury proceedings at issue to the district court. It is not until the district court determines what constitutes grand jury material in the context of this case, which it can do only at the conclusion of the proceedings before it, that it will know what aspects of the briefs, the hearing, and the sentencing memorandum to make public, if any. 24 The newspapers have expressed concern that a district court would seal proceedings that should otherwise be open based on a mere allegation that grand jury secrets have been or will be disclosed. They submit that this is of particular concern in a case such as this where the parties claiming that a 6(e) violation has occurred were not present during the grand jury investigation, and, therefore, have no basis for knowing what exactly constitutes 6(e) material in this particular case. We conclude, however, that GTECH and the other parties have made at least a colorable showing that 6(e) materials were implicated, and as noted above, the U.S. Attorney was particularly forthcoming. Moreover, the district court made adequate findings in this regard. It stated that the very reason [the briefs are] sealed is there may be materials in there which affect Rule 6(e). Even if it were possible for the district court to identify material that potentially implicates Rule 6(e) in advance and to restrict access only to that particular material without the benefit of oral argument, we would not require the district court to do so. The newspapers would, in essence, have the district court conduct a revolving door hearing to which the media would be let in and then excluded from time to time (or minute to minute) depending on whether grand jury material (or putative grand jury material) was under consideration. But courts cannot conduct their business that way, and we will not tie the hands of the district court in this fashion. Under these circumstances, requiring access to some aspects of the hearing will be cumbersome, impractical, and inefficient. The same would be true of requiring the district court to redact the briefs. The district court has informed the parties that it will disclose all nonsecret aspects of the sentencing memorandum, the briefs, and the hearing as soon as it determines which aspects of those papers and proceedings are secret. Under the circumstances we have described, that access is enough to satisfy any right of access that the newspapers may have to the nonsecret aspects of the proceedings. 25 D. Is the Previously Disclosed Grand Jury Material Here Entitled to Any Protection? The newspapers also contend that there is a First Amendment right of access to the briefs and the hearing in this case because the First Amendment guarantees access to grand jury or other confidential matters to the extent that that information has already been publicly disclosed. They hang their hat on the fact that the sentencing memorandum has already been disclosed to the public, and reason that what the parties opposing access seek to protect is no longer secret. We reject this argument. As we have already noted, the proceedings before the district court will involve the consideration of previously undisclosed grand jury material. Therefore, even if we were to assume that any confidential material contained in the sentencing memorandum is no longer entitled to protection, the proceedings, if public, will, for the reasons we have described, disclose additional confidential material. Since we have held that the district court is not required to conduct a revolving door hearing, in which it would seal only those portions of the proceedings that might reveal grand jury secrets, the district court did not err in sealing the briefs and the hearing even if the information contained in the sentencing memorandum is no longer entitled to protection. Moreover, we cannot agree with the newspapers' contention that grand jury material or putative grand jury material, once disclosed, even if inadvertently, is no longer subject to the protections of Rule 6(e). At bottom, it is clear to us that a court is simply not powerless, in the face of an unlawful disclosure of grand jury secrets, to prevent all further disclosures by the government of those same jury secrets. In other words, even if grand jury secrets are publicly disclosed, they may still be entitled to at least some protection from disclosure. The Supreme Court's decision in United States v. Sells Engineering, Inc., 463 U.S. 418 (1983), is instructive on this point. In that case, lawyers in the Justice Department's Civil Division had access to certain grand jury materials for two years before the Ninth Circuit held that those lawyers 26 were not entitled to the materials under Rule 6(e)(3)(A)(i), which governs disclosure to other government lawyers. The Supreme Court noted that the case was not moot, despite government protestations to the contrary:  `The controversy here is still a live one. . . . Each day this order remains effective the veil of secrecy is lifted higher by disclosure to additional personnel and by the continued access of those to whom the materials have already been disclosed. We cannot restore the secrecy that has already been lost but we can grant partial relief by preventing further disclosure.'  Id. at 423 n.6 (quoting In re Grand Jury Investigation No. 78-184 (Sells, Inc.), 642 F.2d 1184, 118788 (9th Cir. 1981)); see also In the Matter of Special March 1981 Grand Jury, 753 F.2d 575, 577 (7th Cir. 1985) (If the Court orders such disclosure erroneously, we suppose both that an injured person can complain by filing . . . a petition with the court that ordered disclosure and that the court has inherent power to issue an appropriate curative order . . . . We do not think Congress meant to leave the courts powerless to correct such errors. (citations omitted)); United States v. Nix, 21 F.3d 347, 350 (9th Cir. 1994) (We faced a somewhat similar situation in [Sells Engineering]. . . . We acknowledged that secrecy could not be restored, but held that the appeal was not moot because issues relating to future disclosure needed to be addressed.).16 _________________________________________________________________ 16. The cases relied on by the newspapers on this point are inapposite. First, they cite us to In re Charlotte Observer, 882 F.2d 850 (4th Cir. 1989) (Charlotte Observer I), in which the Fourth Circuit reversed an order of the district court sealing proceedings relating to a change of venue motion in a well-publicized criminal case. The district court concluded that closure was necessary in order to prevent republication of the prejudicial pre-trial publicity. The Fourth Circuit disagreed, stating [w]here closure is wholly inefficacious to prevent a perceived harm, that alone suffices to make it constitutionally impermissible. Id. at 855. Unlike the case before us, however, Charlotte Observer I involved only the republication of matters of public record. As such, the court found there was a presumptive right of access to the proceedings, and the only issue before it was whether the defendants' interest in closure was sufficient. Moreover, in In re Charlotte Observer, 921 F.2d 47 (4th Cir. 1990) (Charlotte Observer II), the same court reversed an order of the district 27 We acknowledge that the circumstances of this case are different from those before the Supreme Court in Sells Engineering because the potential grand jury secrets disclosed here were disseminated to members of the public, rather than to certain, identifiable government lawyers and their staffs. The order entered by the district court in this case cannot effectively bar further dissemination of any potential grand jury secrets by members of the public who possess the sentencing memorandum.17 Nevertheless, this difference in the degree of disclosure does not change the result in this case. Although the district court could not prevent the newspapers from publishing the sentencing memorandum once they came into possession of it, the court properly prevented further government disclosures of the putative grand jury secrets contained in the sentencing memorandum to additional parties. Even if the dissemination by members of the public continues, the _________________________________________________________________ court enjoining two reporters from publishing confidential information that was inadvertently revealed in open court. The court noted that [o]n the present record . . . `the cat is out of the bag.' The district court did not close the hearing and the disclosure was made in the courtroom, a particularly public forum. Once announced to the world, the information lost its secret characteristic, an aspect that could not be restored by the issuance of an injunction to two reporters. Id. at 50. Unlike Charlotte Observer I, Charlotte Observer II did potentially implicate secret grand jury material. The information that was inadvertently disclosed was the name of a lawyer who was the target of an ongoing grand jury investigation. Despite the court's language, however, its holding was based in the law of prior restraint: the district court's order barred the reporters from publishing information that they had obtained lawfully. The order, therefore, clearly ran afoul of the line of Supreme Court prior restraint cases, such as Oklahoma Publishing Co. v. District Court, 430 U.S. 308 (1977), and Nebraska Press Association v. Stuart, 427 U.S. 539 (1976). In the case before us, in contrast, the district court's order does not bar the newspapers from publishing the sentencing memorandum in their possession. 17. Nor could the court enter an order barring parties in possession of the sentencing memorandum from passing the memorandum onto other parties. Under prior restraint law, orders prohibiting the media from publishing information already in its possession are strongly disfavored. See, e.g., Oklahoma Publishing Co. v. District Court, 430 U.S. 308 (1977); Nebraska Press Association v. Stuart, 427 U.S. 539 (1976). 28 order barring further disclosure of any secret grand jury material will at least narrow that dissemination.