Court Opinion

ID: 9623689
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 06:40:20.514921+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:52:29.836656
License: Public Domain

GRODIN, J., Concurring.
The majority’s determination that the First Amendment provides no right of access to preliminary hearings is unnecessary to the decision of this case, and I do not join in it. The only constitutional question presented is whether the First Amendment requires a greater right of access than the Legislature has seen fit to establish by statute. I agree with the majority that by its amendment to section 868 the Legislature has decided that open preliminary hearings should be the “rule rather than the exception” {ante, p. 781), the exception existing only when exclusion of the public is, to use the language of the statute, “necessary in order to protect the defendant’s right to fair and impartial trial.”
I agree also that the determination of “necessity” must inevitably be a matter of judgment based upon probabilities, and that the phrase “substantial showing of potential prejudice” (or, what amounts to the same thing, a “reasonable likelihood of substantial prejudice”) constitutes a fair description of the requisite assessment. I do not believe that the First Amendment would require more than that.