Court Opinion

ID: 9487155
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 12:09:47.13698+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:52:07.689343
License: Public Domain

McMILLIAN, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent. The majority opinion ignores the legal principles that have developed to ensure that a defendant enjoys his or her Sixth Amendment right to a public trial. The Supreme Court has emphasized the need for specific findings to help determine whether or not a closure order is justified:
The presumption of openness may be overcome only by an overriding interest based on findings that closure is essential to preserve higher values and is narrowly tailored to serve that interest. The interest is to be articulated along with findings specific enough that a reviewing court can determine whether the closure order was properly entered.
Waller v. Georgia, 467 U.S. 39, 45, 104 S.Ct. 2210, 2214, 81 L.Ed.2d 31 (1984) (Waller). See also Press-Enterprise Co. v. Superior Court, 464 U.S. 501, 104 S.Ct. 819, 78 L.Ed.2d 629 (1984) (trial judge closed voir dire for a rape case, intending to protect privacy interests of jurors who might have highly personal answers; Supreme Court indicated that such privacy interests might be sufficient to warrant closure of voir dire, but found that the judge had not made any specific findings to show that those interests would in fact be threatened by an open hearing).
Although Waller involved the total closure of a trial, the requirement that the trial court make sufficient findings to allow the reviewing court to determine whether or not a closure was justified is equally applicable in the case of a partial closure. See United States v. Galloway, 937 F.2d 542, 546 (10th Cir.1991) (Galloway) (district court must articulate specific findings to support its decision to partially close a trial during testimony).
The majority opinion in the present case upholds the partial closure order based on the victim’s fear of the defendant and his family, the victim’s young age, and the brutal nature of the alleged offense. See Op. at 371. “Although the district court undoubtedly considered these factors in deciding to partially close the courtroom, the court failed to make findings on the record in support of its order as required by the Supreme Court.” Galloway, 937 F.2d at 546. We cannot determine from this record why the district court decided to partially close this trial. The motion for partial closure did not specify any reasons for partial closure. In the absence of specific findings, the majority opinion in the present case upholds the district court’s closure order based only upon a theoretical and abstract potential for harm to the victim.
*373In upholding the district court’s partial closure order in the absence of any factual findings, the majority opinion cites to United States v. Lucas, which involved the protection of an undercover officer’s identity by allowing her to testify behind a screen such that the judge, parties, and jury could see her, but she could not be seen by spectators. Our treatment of the district court’s order in Lucas in no way explains why, in the present case, the majority opinion requires no specific findings to justify the ousting of defendant’s family and friends, the press, and public spectators, from an otherwise public trial. Contrary to the majority opinion’s intimation that the district court in Lucas made no findings regarding the need to utilize a screen, the district court, after hearing testimony and extensive argument by counsel on the matter, specifically found:
that [the undercover officer] was, at the time of trial, involved in unrelated narcotics investigations and that if her identity was revealed her life would be in danger. It also found that people “engaged in unlawful activity in the Kansas City area” might attempt to use the trial to identify [the undercover officer] (citations to transcript omitted), who was one of a very small number of [such] undercover officers in the Kansas City Police force. Consequently, it concluded that the government had established two “overriding interest[s]” likely to be prejudiced if [the undercover officer’s] identity was not concealed: the ability of the police to conduct effectively law enforcement operations, and the physical welfare of the officers involved. It then considered the use of a disguise, the use of a screen and full closure of the courtroom as means of concealing her identity. It concluded that, in order most effectively to protect [the undercover officer] as well as the right to a public trial and the right to confrontation, a screen should be used during her testimony in such a way as to permit spectators to hear but not see her, while not interfering with the ability of the defendants, the court, or the jury to see her when she testified.
Lucas, 932 F.2d at 1217.
The district court in Lucas heard testimony and arguments by counsel, made specific findings, and then balanced the rights of the defendant to a public trial against the protection of the identity of the witness in order to determine whether a partial closure of the courtroom was constitutionally justified. In compliance with Waller, the district court in Lucas made specific findings, identified the interests of the party seeking closure, and considered lesser alternatives. I fail to see how the majority opinion can analogize Lucas to justify the result it reaches in the present case.1
Accordingly, I would remand the case to the district court with directions to supplement the record with the facts and reasoning upon which the partial closure of the courtroom during the victim’s testimony was based.

. By contrast to Lucas, the partial closure in the present case is particularly odd given that the victim’s identity had already been disclosed, and the victim had already testified in part in open court, before the defendant's family and friends. Furthermore, the majority opinion presents a chimerical analogy: “[ajlthough Lucas dealt with a screen that shielded the witness from spectators, Farmer presents the same legal issue.” Op. at 371. The use of a screen to protect a witness' identity does not involve the same secretiveness and censorship concerns and fairness interests as the outright removal of all spectators from a courtroom. In Lucas, the trial court allowed spectators "to hear but not see” the witness. Lucas, 932 F.2d at 1217.