Court Opinion

ID: 9491680
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 14:20:37.510922+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:54:53.179615
License: Public Domain

MERRITT, Circuit Judge,
dissenting, joined by Chief Judge BOYCE F. MARTIN and Judges DAUGHTREY, COLE, CLAY and GILMAN.
Rightly acknowledging that all of the jurors knew details about DeLisle’s case from TV, radio and newspapers in Detroit, and that five jurors knew details of the involuntary confession, our Court notes that the *390media attention was “intense” and “inflammatory.” But what makes DeLisle’s criminal trial and conviction rise to the level of unconstitutionality is not simply the sustained pervasive publicity or the fact that DeLisle suffered a trial by TV cameras, radio and newspapers. It is rather that the Michigan judiciary itself judges elected to protect the rights of the individual actively and intentionally fostered the unfair publicity. Incredibly, in response to media demands based on totally meritless First Amendment arguments, the presiding judge of the Recorder’s Court in Detroit (a criminal court of limited jurisdiction) convened a judicial press conference to publicize an inadmissible, involuntary, hypnotically induced, sealed confession, two weeks after it had been suppressed by the judge who was about to convene a jury to try DeLisle’s case. The Michigan Court of Appeals issued orders on appeal allowing the press conference to take place.
Our Court fails to condemn or analyze adequately the constitutional effect of this unprecedented action perpetrated, and then approved, by Michigan judicial officers. Rather, our court defends the Michigan courts that released the inadmissible confession to the media. The effect of the court’s decision is to issue an open invitation to governmental officials, elected or otherwise even judges, who surely should know better to kowtow to the demands of the press for the most inflammatory, inadmissible, pretrial information.
The fact is that the presiding judge of the Detroit Recorders (Criminal) Court called the interested press and public together in his courtroom and released to them the entire coerced confession. To suggest, as the majority does, that the results of this event were not intentional or deliberate defies the ancient principle of the law that a person even a judge should be held to intend the natural and probable consequences of his actions. It should be obvious to anyone that judicial release of the coerced confession to the assembled press in a sensational murder trial would result in massive publicity about the confession. It should likewise be obvious that such publicity would find its way to potential jurors and would tend to undermine the presumption of innocence and right to be tried by a jury based only on the evidence heard in the courtroom. It is not as though the presiding judge was not on notice of the consequences. When he convened the press conference, one of his colleagues on the district court had just issued an opinion stating the obvious point that release of the confession would create “a substantial probability” that the defendant could not receive a “fair trial.”
Similarly, it is easy to refute the majority’s opinion that jurors did not know that a Michigan judge had released the coerced confession to the press for publication and that this fact was not “publicized or of any apparent interest or importance.” Just as one would expect, a grateful media gave the judge credit for his good deed. It may be true that the jurors did not think in the legal terms our Court uses ie., that the media accounts were given “the official imprimatur of the Michigan courts.” But certainly the jurors knew that the Michigan courts were involved in releasing the statements because not only did the media accounts so state but even the juror questionnaire sent to all of the jurors so stated. Question 35 called to their attention “news reports on statements that DeLi-sle supposedly gave to the police.” Question 37 states that there were “court decisions about the statements that the jurors may be aware of.” The jurors were told by the questionnaire that the statements they had seen and heard on TV and radio and read about in the newspaper were related to “court decisions about [the] statements that the police tried to get from DeLisle.” How can it be fairly argued that the jurors could not have known of the judicial involvement in the release of the coerced confession? And how can this judicial press conference be fairly defended as of no “importance?”
By sanctioning such unusual judicial conduct by the Michigan courts, our Court fails to heed the rules laid down by the Supreme Court of the United States on this subject.
In 1951 in Shepherd v. Florida, Justice Jackson, commenting on the sheriffs release of inadmissible confessions in a sensational murder case, wrote: “It is hard to imagine a more prejudicial influence than a press re*391lease by the officer of the court charged with defendants’ custody stating that they had confessed, and here just such a statement, unsworn to, unseen, uncross-examined and uneontradicted, was conveyed by the press to the jury.” 341 U.S. 50, 52, 71 S.Ct. 549, 95 L.Ed. 740 (1951) (Jackson, J., concurring). A unanimous Supreme Court reversed the conviction of four defendants that had occurred under such circumstances.
Even more unimaginable is the present case in which a judicial press conference disclosed prior to trial a coerced confession that had already been suppressed as hypnotically induced. The Michigan trial judge had suppressed DeLisle’s confession after determining that it was involuntary, coerced, and hypnotically induced by the police. Nevertheless, two weeks later, other Michigan courts maximized the confession’s prejudicial effect by openly conveying it to the Detroit press in the same court where DeLisle was subsequently tried and convicted. As a result of the massive publicity that followed this judicial press conference, five of the jurors who convicted DeLisle knew the details of the confession but did not know it was coerced and unreliable because, in Justice Jackson’s words, the confession was “unseen, uncross-examined and uncontradicted” at trial. Id.
In this habeas appeal, the key question is whether this collusion between the Michigan judiciary and the Detroit press deprived De-Lisle of his right to due process of law and to a fair trial by an impartial jury. The majority of the Court treats this case as a routine pretrial publicity case, a characterization of the problem completely divorced from reality. Reciting case law from Irvin v. Dowd, 366 U.S. 717, 81 S.Ct. 1639, 6 L.Ed.2d 751 (1961), through Murphy v. Florida, 421 U.S. 794, 95 S.Ct. 2031, 44 L.Ed.2d 589 (1975), and Patton v. Yount, 467 U.S. 1025, 104 S.Ct. 2885, 81 L.Ed.2d 847 (1984), to the more recent case of Mu’Min v. Virginia, 500 U.S. 415, 111 S.Ct. 1899, 114 L.Ed.2d 493 (1991), the Court holds that pretrial publicity can never deprive a defendant of a fair trial so long as the jurors disclaim any effect it had on their ability to be impartial, no matter what the source of the prejudicial publicity.
But it is the judicial source of the publicity that makes this case unprecedented in American legal history. In most cases of this nature, the press is the source, and the judiciary — often ineffectively — tries to be the guardian of individual rights. Without the equivalent of an English rule (which punishes the press for discussing any case sub judi-ce), trial courts in the United States typically strain to minimize the influence our “free press” has upon those cases under their care. But the First and Sixth Amendments are not mutually exclusive options. Instead, they describe distinct institutional responsibilities which the press and the judiciary must fulfill. When reporters and judges inevitably clash in a controversial trial, one overarching principle governs, with two possible results.
The guiding principle concerns the institutional duty of the courts. As the press sometimes sensationalizes cases and hypes the news, the judiciary’s responsibility is to protect the liberties of the individual. Thus, in a sensational criminal case, the trial judge must try to protect the defendant from any outside influence the press will have on his impending trial. Justice Frankfurter put it plainly:
Without a free press there can be no free society. Freedom of the press, however, is not an end in itself but a means to the end of a free society. The scope and nature of the constitutional protection of freedom of speech must be viewed in that light and in that light applied. The independence of the judiciary is no less a means to the end of a free society, and the proper functioning of an independent judiciary puts the freedom of the press in its proper perspective. For the judiciary cannot function properly if what the press does is reasonably calculated to disturb the judicial judgment in its duty and capacity to act solely on the basis of what is before the court. A judiciary is not independent unless courts of justice are enabled to administer law by absence of pressure without, whether exerted through the blandishments of reward or the menace of disfavor.
Pennekamp v. Florida, 328 U.S. 331, 354-55, 66 S.Ct. 1029, 90 L.Ed. 1295 (1946) (Frankfurter, J., concurring) (footnote omitted). *392Justice Jackson simply stated, “Newspapers, in the enjoyment of their constitutional rights, may not deprive accused persons of their right to fair trial.” Shepherd v. Florida, 341 U.S. at 53, 71 S.Ct. 549.
The Supreme Court has firmly established this principle under both the Sixth and First Amendments. In Sheppard v. Maxwell, the Supreme Court set out the Sixth Amendment duty of state courts responsible for trying sensational criminal cases:
Given the pervasiveness of modern communications and the difficulty of effacing prejudicial publicity from the minds of the jurors, the trial courts must take strong measures to ensure that the balance is never weighed against the accused. And appellate tribunals have the duty to make an independent evaluation of the circumstances .... But we must remember that reversals are but palliatives; the cure lies in those remedial measures that will prevent the prejudice at its inception. The courts must take such steps by rule and regulation that will protect their processes from prejudicial outside interferences. Neither prosecutors, counsel for defense, the accused, witnesses, court staff nor enforcement officers coming under the jurisdiction of the court should be permitted to frustrate its function.
384 U.S. 333, 362-63, 86 S.Ct. 1507, 16 L.Ed.2d 600 (1966); see also Nebraska Press Ass’n v. Stuart, 427 U.S. 539, 554-55, 96 S.Ct. 2791, 49 L.Ed.2d 683 (1976); cf. Marshall v. United States, 360 U.S. 310, 312-13, 79 S.Ct. 1171, 3 L.Ed.2d 1250 (1959). When courts fail this duty, the Supreme Court has said that their proceedings “entirely lack[] the solemnity and sobriety to which a defendant is entitled in a system that subscribes to any notion of fairness and rejects the verdict of a mob.” Murphy v. Florida, 421 U.S. 794, 799, 95 S.Ct. 2031, 44 L.Ed.2d 589 (1975). Here the courts not only failed to protect against the wrong; they deliberately perpetrated it.
The same duties are required under the First Amendment. In Gannett Co. v. De Pasquale, the Supreme Court explicitly notified trial courts of their “affirmative constitutional duty to minimize the effects of prejudicial pretrial publicity.” 443 U.S. 368, 378, 99 S.Ct. 2898, 61 L.Ed.2d 608 (1979). Although the Gannett Company argued just as they did in the Michigan trial court here that they had a First Amendment right of full access to a pretrial suppression hearing, the Court squarely rejected this argument. Relying on Sheppard, the Court announced the following, which is especially relevant in light of the injustice wrought in DeLisle’s case:
Publicity concerning pretrial suppression hearings ... poses special risks of unfairness. The whole purpose of such hearings is to screen out unreliable or illegally obtained evidence and insure that this evidence does not become known to the jury. Publicity concerning the proceedings at a pretrial hearing, however, could influence public opinion against a defendant and inform potential jurors of inculpatory information wholly inadmissible at the actual trial.
The danger of publicity concerning pretrial suppression hearings is particularly acute, because it may be difficult to measure with any degree of certainty the effects of such publicity on the fairness of the trial. After the commencement of the trial itself, inadmissible prejudicial information about a defendant can be kept from a jury by a variety of means. When such information is publicized during a pretrial proceeding, however, it may never be altogether kept from potential jurors. Closure of pretrial proceedings is often one of the most effective methods that a trial judge can employ to attempt to insure that the fairness of a trial will not be jeopardized by the dissemination of such information throughout the community before the trial itself has even begun.
Id. at 378-79, 99 S.Ct. 2898 (citations and footnotes omitted); see also Press-Enterprise Co. v. Superior Court, 478 U.S. 1, 13-15, 106 S.Ct. 2735, 92 L.Ed.2d 1 (1986).
With this principle or “affirmative constitutional duty” in mind, there are two possible results when a jury is prejudiced by pretrial publicity. If potential jurors learn about the case from the press in the exercise of its x*ight to publish, the trial judge must ascertain the extent of the impact through voir *393dire and choose jurors who can nonetheless decide the case impartially. In those cases, where the judiciary may not control what the press publishes, courts must be satisfied with jurors who can try to put the publicity out of their minds. A long line of cases in American history stand for that result, starting with Justice Marshall’s opinion in the case against Aaron Burr, United States v. Burr, 25 F.Cas. 49 (No. 14,692g) (C.C.D.Va.1807), to Reynolds v. United States, 98 U.S. (8 Otto) 145, 25 L.Ed. 244 (1878), moving all the way through to the Irvin-Mwrphy-Yount-Mu’Min line of cases relied upon by the majority. The law requires a pragmatic accommodation between a free press and a fair trial when the media and the judiciary, in the exercise of their respective roles, cross purposes. In sensational trials, the judge must seat the best jury available under the circumstances, without expecting the jurors to be “totally ignorant of the facts and issues involved.” Irvin, 366 U.S. at 722, 81 S.Ct. 1639.
But the Supreme Court has reached an altogether different result in cases in which the court or its officers are directly and intentionally responsible for the prejudice. If the jury learns inadmissible, prejudicial information from the court or its officers in this way, any conviction that results must be vacated and the defendant must be given a new, fair trial. In these cases, it is the judiciary itself supposedly responsible for the fair and impartial administration of justice that has fixed the scales against the defendant. Nothing the jurors can say will remove this disadvantage. It should be obvious that the judicial press conference that precipitated DeLisle’s conviction is one of these circumstances that demands a new trial.
Starting with Mattox v. United States more than a century ago, where a bailiff went into the jury room during deliberations and read the jurors a newspaper article commenting on the overwhelming evidence of the defendant’s guilt and reporting that the defendant had been tried for his life before, the Supreme Court held:
It is vital in capital cases that the jury should pass upon the case free from external causes tending to disturb the exercise of deliberate and unbiased judgment. Nor can any ground of suspicion that the administration of justice has been interfered with be tolerated.... Private communications, possibly prejudicial, between jurors and third persons, or witnesses, or the officer in charge, are absolutely forbidden, and invalidate the verdict, at least unless their harmlessness is made to appear.
146 U.S. 140, 149-50, 13 S.Ct. 50, 36 L.Ed. 917 (1892) (emphasis added). Similarly, in Turner v. Louisiana the Court vacated a conviction obtained after two sheriffs who were in charge of the jury also testified against the defendant, stating:
It would have undermined the basic guarantees of trial by jury to permit this kind of an association between the jurors and two key prosecution witnesses who were not deputy sheriffs. But the role that [the witnesses] played as deputies made the association even more prejudicial. For the relationship was one which could not but foster the jurors’ confidence in those who were their official guardians at trial. And Turner’s fate depended upon how much confidence the jury placed in these two witnesses.
379 U.S. 466, 474, 85 S.Ct. 546, 13 L.Ed.2d 424 (1965). And in Parker v. Gladden, when the state argued that ten of the jurors did not hear the bailiff encourage the jury to find the accused guilty, the Court observed:
This overlooks the fact that the official character of the bailiff — as an officer of the court as well as the State — beyond question carries great weight with a jury which he had been shepherding for eight days and nights.... [W]e believe that the unauthorized conduct of the bailiff involves such a probability that prejudice will result that it is inherently lacking in due process.
385 U.S. 363, 365, 87 S.Ct. 468, 17 L.Ed.2d 420 (1966) (quoting Estes v. Texas, 381 U.S. 532, 542-43, 85 S.Ct. 1628, 14 L.Ed.2d 543 (1965)).
Although it is true that the court officials and police officers did not speak to the jurors directly as in Mattox, Turner and Parker, the police announced the confession to potential jurors and the judge made its entire *394contents available to them. The inexcusable nature of the prejudice that attaches when court officials release a defendant’s confession to the jury through the press was the point Justice Jackson stressed in Shepherd v. Florida, 341 U.S. at 51-53, 71 S.Ct. 549 (Jackson, J., concurring). Likewise, it was the issue discussed by Justice Frankfurter in Stroble v. California. Compare 343 U.S. 181, 192-93, 72 S.Ct. 599, 96 L.Ed. 872 (1952) (“To have the prosecutor himself feed the press with evidence that no self-restrained press ought to publish in anticipation of a trial is to make the State itself through the prosecutor, who wields its power, a conscious participant in trial by newspaper, instead of by those methods which centuries of experience have shown to be indispensable to the fair administration of justice.”). And it was one of the most prejudicial aspects in Sam Sheppard’s infamous circus trial. See Sheppard, 384 U.S. at 355, 86 S.Ct. 1507 (“[W]e believe that the arrangements made by the judge with the news media caused Sheppard to be deprived of that ‘judicial serenity and calm to which [he] was entitled.’”). Most importantly, the Supreme Court went out of its way to condemn such impermissible judicial revelations in both Rideau v. Louisiana, 373 U.S. 723, 725-27, 83 S.Ct. 1417, 10 L.Ed.2d 663 (1963), and Irvin v. Dowd, 366 U.S. 717, 719-20, 725-27, 729-30, 81 S.Ct. 1639, 6 L.Ed.2d 751 (1961) (Frankfurter, J., concurring).1
By the same token, a conviction obtained by holding a defendant’s conviction involuntary and inadmissible with one hand and then releasing it to the press with the other violates the most basic assumptions supporting our system of justice. It is clear to me that by maximizing rather than minimizing the prejudicial publicity surrounding this trial and thereby poisoning the well of potential jurors, the Michigan courts deprived DeLisle of due process and the fair trial by an impartial jury guaranteed by the Constitution.
Apart from the judiciary’s prominence in fostering the publicity in this case, the jury’s knowledge of DeLisle’s suppressed confession is an independent constitutional error undermining his conviction. Such knowledge is inherently prejudicial and cannot be eliminated by jury instructions. As the only two judges who actually reviewed DeLisle’s interrogation quickly realized, his statements to the police were as likely the result of his hypnotic interrogation combined with his exhaustion, grief, and sense of personal responsibility following his children’s deaths, as they were a reflection of his true intent during the accident. For example, when the questioning began, DeLisle called the suggestion that he intentionally drove his family into the river “ludicrous.” He said he loved his wife and children and never intended to hurt them. When asked whether he meant to kill his family, he repeatedly said “No.” Yet later, he was drawn into conflicting confessions and denials, such as admitting to pushing down the accelerator and then immediately denying that he wanted his wife to drown. By the middle of the interrogation, he began making senseless statements about having to work overtime so the interrogators could have a day off. He also asked random questions about the “afterlife” as well as the “hellhole” the interrogators were living in. By the end, after hours of subtle coercion, he had been reduced to one who blankly requested, “Electrocution. Gas chamber, hang me. I don’t care. I don’t deserve to live____ Just throw away the key.”
*395The decision to make these inadmissible statements public through a judicial press conference was much more prejudicial to De-Lisle than if the courts had sealed his coerced statements from media scrutiny but had admitted them as evidence at this trial. At least in those circumstances, DeLisle could have confronted the government’s witnesses, attempted to contradict their portrayal, and cross-examined their testimony in front of jurors who had no prior exposure to the evidence. Again Justice Jackson’s words from Shepherd v. Florida are on point:
If a confession had been offered in court, the defendant would have had the right to be confronted by the persons who claimed to have witnessed it, to cross-examine them, and to contradict their testimony. If the court had allowed an involuntary confession to be placed before the jury, we would not hesitate to consider it a denial of due process of law and reverse. When such events take place in the courtroom, defendant’s counsel can meet them with evidence, arguments, and requests for instructions, and can at least preserve his objections on the record.
But neither counsel nor court can control the admission of evidence if unproven, and probably improvable, “confessions” are put before the jury by newspapers and radio. Rights of the defendant to be confronted by witnesses against him and to cross-examine them are thereby circumvented.
341 U.S. at 52, 71 S.Ct. 549.
Pretrial publicity about an inadmissible confession is the paradigm example of a prejudicial influence. See Rideau, 373 U.S. at 725-26, 83 S.Ct. 1417; United States v. Johnson, 584 F.2d 148, 154 (6th Cir.1978). “A prospective juror who has read or heard of the confession ... repeatedly in the news may ... be unable to form an independent judgment as to guilt or innocence from the evidence adduced at trial.” Nebraska Press Ass’n v. Stuart, 423 U.S. 1327, 1333, 96 S.Ct. 251, 46 L.Ed.2d 237 (1975) (Blackmun, J.). This is because “[a] confession is like no other evidence. Indeed, the defendant’s own confession is probably the most probative and damaging evidence that can be admitted against him.” Arizona v. Fulminante, 499 U.S. 279, 296, 111 S.Ct. 1246, 113 L.Ed.2d 302 (1991). The use of involuntary confessions in state criminal trials is considered “constitutionally obnoxious” not just because they are unreliable, but because coerced confessions also “offend the community’s sense of fair play and decency.” Rochin v. California, 342 U.S. 165, 173, 72 S.Ct. 205, 96 L.Ed. 183 (1952); see also Blackburn v. Alabama, 361 U.S. 199, 205-07, 210, 80 S.Ct. 274, 4 L.Ed.2d 242 (1960); Spano v. New York, 360 U.S. 315, 320-21, 79 S.Ct. 1202, 3 L.Ed.2d 1265 (1959); Payne v. Arkansas, 356 U.S. 560, 567-68, 78 S.Ct. 844, 2 L.Ed.2d 975 (1958). On collateral review, the least we owe DeLisle is to ensure that the jury’s improper knowledge of his confession did not contribute to his conviction, especially since his intent to kill his family was the only issue at his trial. See Fulminante, 499 U.S. at 295-96, 111 S.Ct. 1246.
The jury’s access to DeLisle’s suppressed confession distinguishes his appeal from those involving normal allegations of jury prejudice. When the jury is exposed to judicially released, uncross-examined, inadmissible evidence of the defendant’s confession, we may not indulge in the fiction that the jury can somehow put this evidence aside. Fulminante, 499 U.S. at 296, 111 S.Ct. 1246; see also Miller v. Fenton, 474 U.S. 104, 112-18, 106 S.Ct. 445, 88 L.Ed.2d 405 (1985) (rejecting Patton v. Yount’s deference to juror impartiality and requiring “plenary federal review” in habeas cases involving voluntariness of confession); Jackson v. Denno, 378 U.S. 368, 388-89 & n. 15, 84 S.Ct. 1774, 12 L.Ed.2d 908 (1964); Goins v. McKeen, 605 F.2d 947, 952-54 (6th Cir.1979); 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(7) (no presumption where the “State court proceeding” “denied the due process of law”). DeLisle’s jury knew the details of his confession but did not know it was involuntary and unreliable. He had no way to attack or discredit a confession the jury learned about outside the courtroom. This is one of the few contexts “in which the risk that the jury will not, or cannot, follow instructions is so great, and the consequences of failure so vital to the defendant, that the practical and human limitations of the jury system cannot be ignored.” Bruton *396v. United States, 391 U.S. 123, 135, 88 S.Ct. 1620, 20 L.Ed.2d 476 (1968); see also Gray v. Maryland, — U.S.-, 118 S.Ct. 1151, 140 L.Ed.2d 294 (1998) (reaffirming Bruton’s presumption of prejudice when jury improperly learns of confession). We cannot assume that a jury will follow instructions never given about evidence never offered in court but known by the jury anyway. The only thing these jurors may not have learned from the press was how unreliable the confession really was, since the papers, the TV and the radio communicated the most provocative (and incriminating) portions of De-Lisle’s hypnotic ramblings.
The pretrial publicity infecting this case would not have been as pervasive, or the use of the confession by the press so incriminating, had the Michigan courts not invited the media into the courtroom and given them what they clamored for. This unholy alliance between the courts and the press reveals the darker side of an unrestrained, sensation-driven free press joined unfortunately by judges succumbing to the press. Condoning such an alliance abolishes the constitutional requirements that suppress involuntary confessions and illegally obtained evidence at trial. If state courts are themselves free to instigate a feeding frenzy by releasing suppressed confessions and inadmissible evidence before trial, these constitutional requirements have become as hollow a formality as DeLisle’s trial. Cf. Rideau, 373 U.S. at 726, 83 S.Ct. 1417.
Although “[t]he State is free to regulate the procedure of its courts in accordance with its own conceptions of policy,” it may not adopt practices which “offend[] some principle of justice so rooted in the traditions and conscience of our people as to be ranked as fundamental.” Brown v. Mississippi 297 U.S. 278, 285, 56 S.Ct. 461, 80 L.Ed. 682 (1936). One of those principles fundamental to the American theory of justice, as Justice Holmes observed ninety years ago, holds that the “conclusions to be reached in a case will be induced only by evidence and argument in open court, and not by any outside influence, whether of private talk or public print.” Patterson v. Colorado,- 205 U.S. 454, 462, 27 S.Ct. 556, 51 L.Ed. 879 (1907). By the same token, today the television should not be allowed to substitute for the witness stand, nor can newsprint replace judicial control over the admission of trial evidence.
Today’s holding gives a state judge the green light to return to the days before Brown v. Mississippi when state police could safely obtain a conviction based on a confession that they exacted from the defendant through violence. We need only substitute hypnosis for brutality. All the state courts must now do to avoid a constitutional violation is have the trial judge suppress a confession so obtained at the defendant’s trial and then deny a motion for a change of venue to a place where jurors have no pretrial knowledge of the case. It can then guarantee a conviction by holding a judicial press conference from which all potential jurors will learn that the defendant confessed. Conveying the evidence to the jury in this way will maximize its effect while avoiding the defendant’s Sixth Amendment rights to confront his interrogators and to contradict their testimony. As long as the jurors disclaim the influence, the trial will be said to remain “fair” and the press will remain “free.” Although the courts and society have limited recourse to bridle the media where they do not exercise self-restraint, as a civilized society we cannot long live with such a view of what a “fair trial” means. And we should not remain silent in the face of such outrageous judicial conduct.

. This rule, that a defendant is entitled to a new trial when the court or its officers prejudice the jury with extraneous information, has abundant support in both federal and state case law as well. See Gonzales v. Beto, 405 U.S. 1052, 92 S.Ct. 1503, 31 L.Ed.2d 787 (1972); Leonard v. United States, 378 U.S. 544, 84 S.Ct. 1696, 12 L.Ed.2d 1028 (1964); Leviton v. United States, 343 U.S. 946, 72 S.Ct. 860, 96 L.Ed. 1350 (1952) (Frankfurter, J.); United States v. Noriega, 917 F.2d 1543 (11th Cir.1990); In re Application of Dow Jones & Co., Inc., 842 F.2d 603 (2d Cir.1988); Holmes v. United States, 284 F.2d 716 (4th Cir.1960); Krogmann v. United States, 225 F.2d 220 (6th Cir.1955); Briggs v. United States, 221 F.2d 636 (6th Cir.1955); Delaney v. United States, 199 F.2d 107 (1st Cir.1952); Griffin v. United States, 295 F. 437 (C.C.A.3 1924); United States v. King, 911 F.Supp. 113 (S.D.N.Y.1995); McAllister v. Allgood, 249 F.Supp. 408 (E.D.La.1966); People v. McKay, 37 Cal.2d 792, 236 P.2d 145 (Cal.1951); People v. Hryciuk, 5 Ill.2d 176, 125 N.E.2d 61 (Ill.1954); Wasy v. State, 236 Ind. 215, 138 N.E.2d 1 (Ind.1956); Johnson Newspaper Corp. v. Clary, 167 A.D.2d 968, 562 N.Y.S.2d 307 (N.Y.App.Div.1990).