Opinion ID: 1541806
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Closure of the Courtroom

Text: I also respectfully dissent from the rationale of the majority with respect to the issue of the partial closure of the courtroom. The majority has no hesitation in assigning error to the trial justice's order restricting attendance to specified individuals and excluding other unnecessary personnel from defendant's trial, and I agree. I depart from the majority's reasoning, however, regarding the effect of that error. The trial justice's decision to partially close the courtroom may well have been based soundly upon medical reports and other documentation that he reviewed, and he may have considered the arguments of counsel. The problem is, however, that whatever process the trial justice engaged in was undertaken in chambers and was not on the record. I agree with the majority that this was error. What dooms defendant's challenge, according to the majority, is defense counsel's failure to demonstrate that anyone actually was excluded from the courtroom, as well as his failure to suggest to the trial justice that his closure order could have been tailored more narrowly. The majority reasons that the record fails to illuminate whether anyone actually was excluded from the courtroom. In my opinion, this is a classic harmless-error analysis and is flawed in light of our holding in State v. Torres, 844 A.2d 155, 162 (R.I.2004). The majority cites two decisions of this Court, State v. Lerner, 112 R.I. 62, 308 A.2d 324 (1973), and State v. Fayerweather, 540 A.2d 353 (R.I.1988), to support its proposition that the trial justice's error is not reversible based on a dearth of evidence of exclusion. In Lerner, 112 R.I. at 91, 308 A.2d at 342, the trial justice denied the defendant's motion to conduct his trial in a larger courtroom. The defendant argued that this denial violated his right to a public trial as guaranteed by the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution. Id. In denying the defendant's appeal on this issue, we said: No basis is established in the record that the size of the courtroom in any way deprived defendant of a fair trial. The trial justice pointed to factors which militated against a change of courtroom and in the sound exercise of his discretion denied this motion. While it is suggested that the public would be excluded from the trial, nothing in the record establishes that the public actually was excluded.    On the basis of the record and the briefs presented, we are unable to conclude that defendant was prejudiced in any way by the size of the courtroom. Id. In Lerner, however, there is no indication whatsoever that the trial justice issued an order to close the courtroom or even that he was asked to do so  he simply declined the defendant's request to move the trial to a larger courtroom. Further, Lerner was decided well before Waller v. Georgia, 467 U.S. 39, 104 S.Ct. 2210, 81 L.Ed.2d 31 (1984) and Press-Enterprise Co. v. Superior Court of California, 464 U.S. 501, 104 S.Ct. 819, 78 L.Ed.2d 629 (1984), in which the United States Supreme Court clearly delineated rules for trial justices to abide by when considering courtroom closures. In Fayerweather, 540 A.2d at 353-54, the defendant argued that the trial justice erroneously granted the prosecution's motion to close the courtroom during the testimony of a six-year-old sexual-abuse victim. Deciding against the defendant, this Court held that [t]here is nothing to suggest that a significant number of individuals attended the trial or wished to attend or were unable to gain admittance to the courtroom when the six-year-old was about to testify. Id. at 354. Because of that, this Court held that the defendant suffered no prejudice and the trial justice's error, if any, was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. Id. In other words, in Fayerweather, even though we determined that the trial justice's failure to conduct the hearing before restricting public access to the courtroom was constitutionally deficient, we pointed out that the record was devoid of evidence that anyone was prohibited from attending the proceeding, and, therefore, declared the error to be harmless. But, Fayerweather is singularly inapplicable here because when we decided Torres, some eighteen years later, we adopted and embraced the United States Supreme Court's holding that violations of the Sixth Amendment's public-trial provision are not subject to a `harmless error' analysis. Torres, 844 A.2d at 162 (citing Arizona v. Fulminante, 499 U.S. 279, 309, 111 S.Ct. 1246, 113 L.Ed.2d 302 (1991) and Waller, 467 U.S. at 49 n. 9, 104 S.Ct. 2210). The majority also faults defendant for not specifying those individuals to whom the order would apply. However, there are two ways that a member of the public can be excluded from a trial  either by being asked to leave after he already has been seated, or by being barred from entering after the order takes effect. Even if defendant could have specified the people in the former category, he would have no awareness of those in the latter category. The majority further faults defendant for not affirmatively suggesting less confining restrictions to the trial justice's partial closure order. In essence, the majority blames defendant for the trial justice's error because defendant was not more specific or aggressive. As authority for this conclusion, the majority cites a string of cases. See Bell v. Jarvis, 236 F.3d 149, 155-56 (4th Cir.2000); Brown v. Kuhlmann, 142 F.3d 529, 541 (2d Cir.1998); Ayala v. Speckard, 131 F.3d 62, 71 (2d Cir.1997). It is significant that in each and every one of those cases, the trial justice had conducted a hearing on the closure motion in open court and he had made findings of fact to support his order. At that point, courts have reasoned that a defendant cannot sit idly by, but must make some suggestions about how the court's objectives to partially close the courtroom can be carried out in a more narrowly tailored fashion. But here, the order was fatally flawed from the beginning because there was no hearing, no findings based upon that hearing, and no record for us to review. Errors by trial justices may be harmless or reversible. [22] Because a public trial is a right guaranteed to an accused by the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution and article 1, section 10, of the Rhode Island Constitution, we held in Torres, 844 A.2d at 162, that violations of these provisions are not subject to harmless error. In my opinion, therefore, the trial justice's issuing an order to partially close the courtroom in this case, absent the constitutional safeguards set forth in the case law, was reversible error. I would, therefore, vacate the judgment of conviction and order a new trial for this defendant.