Court Opinion

ID: 9714363
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 05:35:58.904886+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:25.466031
License: Public Domain

Ryan, J.
(dissenting). On July 2, 1980, while this case was under consideration, the United States Supreme Court decided Richmond Newspapers, Inc v Virginia, 448 US 555; 100 S Ct 2814; 65 L Ed 2d 973 (1980).
*397Although six concurring opinions were written in the case, and four of the seven Justices voting in the majority concurred only "in the judgment”, it is clear that all seven agreed that the First Amendment of the United States Constitution, made applicable to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment, guarantees to the public, including the press, the right to attend criminal trials.
As Chief Justice Burger, writing the lead opinion, said:
"We hold that the right to attend criminal trials is implicit in the guarantees of the First Amendment; without the freedom to attend such trials, which people have exercised for centuries, important aspects of the freedom of speech and 'of the press could be eviscerated’ ”,
and,
"Absent an overriding interest articulated in findings, the trial of a criminal case must be open to the public.” Opinion of Burger, C.J. (Footnotes and citations omitted.)
We have intentionally delayed the release of our decision in this case for months, awaiting the decision in Richmond Newspapers, supra, suspecting the decision in that case would control resolution of the issue before us. Just as suspected, Richmond Newspapers is squarely on point and, in my view, is dispositive of this case.
The majority of this Court, however, while acknowledging Richmond Newspapers, has held merely that:
"On the basis of common law and § 1420 of the *398Revised Judicature Act, we conclude that the public may not be excluded from a criminal trial without first giving full and fair consideration to the public’s interests in maintaining an open proceeding.” (Footnote omitted.)
Therefore, notwithstanding that the factual similarities of Richmond Newspapers and this case render the two cases jurisprudentially indistinguishable, the majority holds that the public has a mere interest in access to criminal trials based upon the common law and the statute, and declines to recognize a constitutional right of access under the First and Fourteenth Amendments of the United States Constitution.
Although declaring that the "result in this case is consistent with the result reached in Richmond and could now be predicated upon the holding in Richmond”, the majority prefers "an alternate ground for decision” and thus declines to hold that the Detroit Free Press and its representatives, and indeed the entire public, have the same constitutional rights as do the Richmond Newspaper and its representatives.
While no reason is stated for that preference, my colleagues’ opinion suggests, but certainly does not state, that the disinclination to recognize the plaintiffs constitutional right to attend criminal trials is because the parties before us only "perfunctorily raised First-Amendment arguments”.
While it is true that the appellant’s claim that the public has a constitutional right to attend criminal trials was based upon the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution, nevertheless the appellants stated four separate times in their brief that the public’s right to be present at such trials was also guaranteed, "arguably, by the *399First Amendment”.1 In addition, the appellee Recorder’s Court Judge, in his answering brief, four times acknowledged that the appellant was relying on an "arguable” First Amendment claim and indeed explicitly asserted that "neither the First nor the Sixth Amendments to the Federal Constitution gives the public or the press a right to be present at the trial of a criminal defendant”.2
Thus, while the parties were principally concerned with an asserted Sixth Amendment constitutional right to attend criminal trials, the appellant raised an "arguable” First Amendment claim, if only as a secondary argument, and the appellee specifically replied to it. In any event, the resolution of this case is governed by the First Amendment of the United States Constitution as it is made applicable to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment. The United States Supreme Court has said as much in Richmond Newspapers.
The parties before us have been waiting a year and a half for our decision. We purposely delayed its release, awaiting United States Supreme Court guidance on the question in the Richmond Newspapers case. We have that guidance now and we should follow it. Surely we cannot have laid aside this case for months awaiting Richmond Newspapers merely in order to acknowledge its release, declare we could have predicated today’s result upon it, and otherwise ignore its precedent-shattering holding. In my view, the route taken by my colleagues assures the irrelevance of today’s decision and fuels the increasingly widespread notion that state courts cannot be depended upon to adequately address and resolve cases involving major Federal constitutional issues.
*400If it is thought that there is any conceivable basis upon which this case can be distinguished from Richmond Newspapers, or that the rule of that case should not be applied until the parties before us have further addressed the issues, an order might enter requiring them to file typewritten supplemental briefs within 30 days addressing the applicability of Richmond Newspapers.
In my view, however, even that is not necessary. I would hold that under the First Amendment of the United States Constitution, made applicable to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment, the public, including representatives of the press, have a constitutional right to attend criminal trials.

 Appellant’s brief, pp 10,16, 25 and 27.

 Appellee’s brief, p 16. See also pp 7, 12 and 15.