Opinion ID: 6323200
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: factual issue of closure

Text: To begin, we disagree with the lower courts’ finding that the courtroom was not closed to the public. Here, the trial court ordered “everyone in the gallery to leave the courthouse and not come back.” 8 And it further specified that the observers were not allowed to return “[f]or the remainder of the trial, all the way in to next week” and that “[t]he only person allowed to watch this trial is the mother of the young man who died.” There is no ambiguity in this language: The trial court had ordered the courtroom closed to all observers except Hanson’s 8 The court made an exception for Hanson’s mother, whose presence was expressly permitted by statute. MCL 780.761; MCL 780.752(1)(m)(ii)(C). 11 mother for the remainder of the trial. We are “left with a definite and firm conviction” that the trial court was mistaken in concluding otherwise. Kurylczyk, 443 Mich at 303. The trial court’s posttrial interpretation of this oral order as a temporary “clearing” of the courtroom ignores its own explicit instruction that the observers were not allowed to return for the remainder of trial, not just the remainder of that particular day. 9 Moreover, even accepting as true the trial court’s posttrial assertions that it did not lock the courtroom or eject any observers during the remainder of trial, the trial court’s failure to enforce or otherwise effectuate the order does not undo it. 10 The observers who were removed from the courtroom on the day of the order were directed not to return for the remainder of the trial, and they did not. The parties understood that no observers would be allowed for the 9 Specifically, at the close of the evidentiary hearing, the trial court stated, “I admit I poorly worded [the order] because I said don’t come back and I probably should have said don’t come back today,” but the trial court actually directed the observers not to return “[f]or the remainder of the trial.” 10 While the Court of Appeals found that the courtroom was not closed, it proceeded in the alternative with a plain-error analysis as follows: The trial court stated that it did not actually close the courtroom to the public and that the doors were never locked, and no one was ejected from the courtroom after Frye and the victim’s other supporters were ejected. We decline to call into question the highly respected jurist’s credibility, so we shall proceed with our analysis on the assumption that the courtroom was closed for the remainder of the trial. [People v Davis, 331 Mich App at 712 n 1.] There are established standards for reviewing the trial court’s findings of fact and conclusions of law, and none of these standards involves an assessment of the presiding judge’s professional reputation. See People v LeBlanc, 465 Mich 575, 579; 640 NW2d 246 (2002). The presence of legal error does not depend on a jurist’s respectability, and to the extent that the Court of Appeals adopted the trial court’s rulings and findings of fact on that basis, it erred. 12 remainder of the trial, and the trial court did not later advise them otherwise. We do not require the trial court to have ejected potential observers or taken actions to bar entry of potential observers to find that a closure order was in place. Such requirements would expose potential observers to the risk of being held in contempt of court for violating the previously rendered closure order. It would also treat defendants inequitably on the basis of the level of community interest in their prosecution, as those whose cases lack potential interested observers would be unable to meet this standard. In sum, pursuant to the plain language of the trial court’s verbal order, we find that the trial court’s order rendered the courtroom closed to the public for a majority of the trial.