Court Opinion

ID: 9851591
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 05:15:32.909441+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:22:07.739919
License: Public Domain

SEARS, Chief Justice,
dissenting.
A room that is so small that it cannot accommodate the public is a room that is too small to accommodate a constitutional criminal trial.6 Here, however, it is clear from the pictures in the record that complete closure to the public of a critical portion of the trial — voir dire — was not required by space considerations, nor was the closure prompted by specific conduct by any of the spectators in the courtroom. Instead, it was the trial court’s sole decision to conduct voir dire with 42 potential jurors in the courtroom at a time that created the overcrowding problem, a decision wholly within the trial court’s control.
The majority acknowledges that the trial court did not consider any alternatives to closure. The trial court believed — erroneously — that the constitutional commands to keep criminal trials open to the public do not apply to voir dire.7 The failure to consider alternatives sua sponte — after announcing at the outset of trial that it planned to close voir dire to the public entirely — is a clear violation of the United States Supreme Court’s decision in Waller v. Georgia and our own decision in R.W. Page Corp. v. Lumpkin.8 The Supreme Court held in Waller that “the trial court must consider reasonable *275alternatives to closing the proceeding.”9 In Lumpkin, we emphasized that Georgia trial judges have even less discretion in this area than their federal counterparts do before stating the following:
While federal trial court judges are admonished to consider jury sequestration (or some other remedy) as an alternative to the closing of hearings to the public and the press, we now hold that a Georgia trial court judge shall use jury sequestration (or some other means) to exclude prejudicial matters from the jury’s knowledge and consideration unless for some reason fully articulated in his findings of fact and conclusions of law jury sequestration (or another remedy) would not adequately protect the defendant’s right to a fair trial.10
Waller and Lumpkin are controlling and mandate reversal here.
The majority excuses the trial court’s failure to consider alternatives to closure on the ground that none were suggested to it. The majority thus shifts from the trial court to the defendant the burden of coming up with alternatives to closure as a prerequisite for securing a public trial. However, Presley’s counsel had no advance notice that the trial court intended to close voir dire to the public, and thus it can hardly be said that the failure of Presley’s counsel to come up with specific alternatives on the spot amounted to a knowing, voluntary, and intelligent waiver by Presley of his constitutional right to a public trial.11
Second and more importantly, the majority fails to explain why the requirement to consider alternatives to closure should be obviated when it is the trial court rather than a party who initiates it. The constitutional right to a public trial is designed primarily to police the conduct of the judges who preside over them by exposing their actions to public scrutiny.12 Thus, it would seem even more *276important to require specific consideration, on the record, of alternatives when a trial court closes a portion of a trial to the public without any prompting by the parties. That is why we held in Lumpkin that even where the prosecution and the defense both agree to closure, the trial court must enter a closure order with “written findings of fact fully articulating the alternatives to closure considered by the trial court and the reason or reasons why such alternative would not afford the movant an adequate remedy.”13 No such order was entered in this case.
Decided March 23, 2009 —
Reconsideration denied April 10, 2009.
Gerard B. Kleinrock, for appellant.
Gwendolyn Keyes Fleming, District Attorney, Daniel J. Quinn, Gerald Mason, Assistant District Attorneys, for appellee.
Most troublingly, the majority’s reasoning permits the closure of voir dire in every criminal case conducted in this courtroom whenever the trial judge decides, for whatever reason, that he or she would prefer to fill the courtroom with potential jurors rather than spectators. This case does not involve testimony by an undercover officer whose life would be threatened if the court were not closed during his or her testimony as the cases cited by the majority in support of its position did.14 It does not involve matters of national security. Rather, this case involves voir dire in a garden variety drug trafficking case no different than hundreds or perhaps even thousands of similar cases pending on the dockets of trial courts throughout this state. The majority today gives the trial courts in these cases the green light to exclude the public entirely from voir dire in all of them, contrary to the express commands of the Sixth Amendment, the Georgia Constitution, Waller, and Lumpkin. I respectfully dissent.
I am authorized to state that Presiding Justice Hunstein joins in this dissent.

 U. S. Const. Amend. VI (“In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a . . . public trial. . ..”); Ga. Const. of 1983, Art. I, Sec. I, Par. XI (a) (“In criminal cases, the defendant shall have a public . . . trial . . . .”).

 Press-Enterprise Co. v. Superior Court of California, 464 U. S. 501, 511 (104 SC 819, 78 LE2d 629) (1984) (holding Sixth Amendment right to a public trial extends to voir dire).

 Waller v. Georgia, 467 U. S. 39 (104 SC 2210, 81 LE2d 31) (1984); R.W. Page Corp. v. Lumpkin, 249 Ga. 576 (292 SE2d 815) (1982). In Waller, the Court held that closure of any *275portion of a criminal trial should be “rare” and stated the constitutional test as follows:
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, 467 U. S. at 48 (emphasis supplied).

 Lumpkin, 249 Ga. at 579-580.

 Lumpkin, 249 Ga. at 579 (“[0]ur constitution commands that open hearings are the nearly absolute rule and closed hearings the very rarest of exceptions.”) (emphasis supplied).

 See, e.g., In re Oliver, 333 U. S. 257, 270 (68 SC 499, 92 LE 682) (1948) (“[T]he guarantee has always been recognized as a safeguard against any attempt to employ our courts as instruments of persecution. The knowledge that every criminal trial is subject to contemporaneous review in the forum of public opinion is an effective restraint on possible abuse of *276judicial power.”).

 Lumpkin, 249 Ga. at 580.

 Ayala v. Speckard, 131 F3d 62, 64-65 (2nd Cir. 1997); New York v. Ramos, 685 NE2d 492, 494 (N.Y. 1997).