Court Opinion

ID: 9863392
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-25 04:16:12.776897+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T11:43:51.089395
License: Public Domain

BLACKWELL, Judge,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent. The court below concluded that the indictment in this case was not returned in a court proceeding open to the public simply because lawyer J. Cameron Tribble did not make it to the courtroom in time to observe the return. The court found that Tribble did not arrive soon enough because he was held up at a security checkpoint until someone arrived to escort him to the courtroom. And the court reasoned that the failure of an escort to appear “without any delay whatsoever” effectively closed the court proceedings that Tribble sought to observe. The court below, I think, applied an incorrect legal standard in assessing whether the delay at the security checkpoint effectively closed the court to the public, and for that reason, I would vacate the judgment below and remand for the court to apply the correct legal standard and reconsider whether the indictment was returned in open court.
When a citizen comes to the courthouse to observe a court proceeding, he may encounter some delay along the way. That delay might be occasioned by a congested security checkpoint, a crowded elevator, an absence of signs clearly identifying the way to the courtroom, misinformation about the particular courtroom in which a proceeding is to be held, or any number of other inconvenient circumstances. As Judge Boggs correctly notes in his dissent,17 not every delay amounts to a closure of the court. Only when a citizen is unreasonably prevented by courthouse officials from attending a court proceeding — either because his admission to the courtroom is unreasonably refused altogether, unreasonably delayed for a time, or *289otherwise unreasonably hindered — can it be said that the proceeding is closed to the public. See Purvis v. State, 288 Ga. 865, 868 (708 SE2d 283) (2011) (holding, with respect to right of public to attend criminal trials, that court has obligation “to take reasonable measures to accommodate public attendance”) (emphasis supplied).
The court below made no finding about whether the delay that Tribble encountered was unreasonable, presumably because, as I understand its order, it found “any delay whatsoever” unacceptable.18 This reflects the application of an incorrect legal standard. The court below also made no findings about many of the circumstances that may prove to be important in assessing the reasonableness of the delay, including, for instance, whether it was reasonable for the Sheriff to require that citizens generally, and Tribble specifically, have an escort, for how long Tribble was delayed by the need to await an escort, whether the escort reasonably should have arrived sooner, and whether Tribble would have made it to the courtroom soon enough to observe the return of the indictment, even with the more prompt arrival of an escort. With so many unanswered questions,191 cannot say as a matter of law that the indictment was not returned in a proceeding open to the public,20 notwithstanding that I have serious *290doubts that it was. Consequently, I would vacate the decision of the court below and remand for that court to make the appropriate findings and reconsider whether the indictment was returned in open court, applying the correct legal standard. Because the majority does not, I respectfully dissent.

 I agree with much of what Judge Boggs has to say, hut I do not join his dissent because, as I understand it, he would conclude as a matter of law that the court was open to the public and reverse the judgment below. I think that determination ought to be made by the court below, applying the correct legal standard.

 The court said that “[i]f Mr. Tribble was required to have been escorted to the courtroom for reasons of safety or security, then the escort should have been provided without any delay whatsoever.” (Emphasis supplied.)

 The majority makes its own factual finding that Tribble was “delayed by approximately ten to fifteen minutes in reaching the courtroom” as a result of his having to wait for an escort. I do not think the record is so clear that we, as appellate judges, can make such a finding. Tribble testified that he telephoned the court administrator for an escort at 3:33 p.m. and that he eventually arrived in the courtroom between 3:45 and 3:52 p.m. The court administrator said that he needed about five minutes to reach the security checkpoint in the old courthouse so that he could escort Tribble to the courtroom, in part because the elevators were being tested at the time. That is the only evidence concerning the length of the delay. Even assuming that Tribble did not arrive in the courthouse until 3:52 p.m., not all of the nineteen minutes following his call to the court administrator can be fairly attributed to his having to await the escort. Surely it would have taken him several minutes, even after the escort arrived, to cross from the old courthouse to the new courthouse, go to the elevator bank, wait for an elevator, ride an elevator to another floor, and walk to the courtroom in which indictments were being returned. I cannot say from the existing record that “ten to fifteen minutes” was spent awaiting an escort, and I do not understand how the majority can make such a finding on this record. I would leave such fact-finding to the trial judge, who, unlike us, has worked in both the old and new courthouses in Cobb County and presumably is much more familiar with the layout of the courthouses. In any event, even if the majority is right, I cannot say as a matter of law that a “ten to fifteen” minute delay is unreasonable.

 In his special concurrence, Judge Dillard expresses concern about citizens being asked about their reasons for visiting the courthouse before they are admitted, and I share that concern, although I do not think it necessarily is dispositive in this case. Such an inquiry is a circumstance that a trial judge properly can consider in assessing whether security procedures unreasonably hindered a citizen from attending a court proceeding. I do not think, however, that a court proceeding is closed to the public just because such an inquiry is made. A sheriff properly can, I think, inquire about whether someone has legitimate business in the courthouse *290before admitting them, so long as the sheriff understands that attending and observing court proceedings is the legitimate business of the public, and so long as the manner of inquiry does not unreasonably hinder the public from attending such proceedings. Here, the Sheriff of Cobb County testified that, if a member of the public had asked for admission to the new courthouse to attend and observe court proceedings, he would have been admitted, albeit with an escort.