Court Opinion

ID: 9795290
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 03:24:36.849779+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:29:06.569931
License: Public Domain

LINDER, J.,
concurring.
I concur in the result that the majority reaches but not in the path that it takes to get there. The majority begins by stating that some of the more difficult issues potentially posed by this case need not be resolved because “no showing of need to limit the public’s attendance at trial was made.” 178 Or App at 237. But the majority does not return to that decisive point until the end of its opinion. Id. at 244. It instead detours to construct a four-pronged test that is as uncertain in its application as it is in its source. Id. at 242-44. Applying that test, the majority then examines whether live television transmissions of trial proceedings offer criminal defendants any of the benefits of a public trial. Id. The majority concludes categorically that such transmissions do *246not. Id. at 243-44. The majority’s reasoning is not tied to the characteristics of the live television transmission in this case nor otherwise limited to the facts before us. Rather, based on a purely abstract examination, the majority issues a per se indictment of the efficacy of live television transmissions generally.
This case can and should be decided on a much narrower ground. As the majority recognizes, the right to a public trial secured by both Article I, section 11, of the Oregon Constitution, and the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution is not absolute. On a proper showing of need, a court can close a criminal trial to the public. See generally Waller v. Georgia, 467 US 39, 46, 104 S Ct 2210, 81 L Ed 2d 31 (1984) (closure of court proceedings requires a strong showing of the need to exclude the public and a restriction on public access that is no broader than necessary to serve that need); State v. Bowers, 58 Or App 1, 646 P2d 1354 (1982) (same); State v. Romel, 57 Or App 372, 644 P2d 643 (1982) (same). The closure can be partial (as when segments of the public are excluded) or complete (as when all members of the public are excluded for some or all of the proceedings), depending on the strength and nature of the showing of need. See generally Judd v. Haley, 250 F3d 1308, 1314-17 (11th Cir 2001) (discussing analysis and representative cases).
From those principles alone, this case can be readily resolved. The state’s primary position is that no showing of need was required because defendant’s right to a public trial was not burdened or infringed to any extent. According to the state, by transmitting the proceedings live to interested members of the public at the Vale courthouse, defendant received the full benefit of his constitutional right to a public trial. We need not decide whether that argument under any circumstances could prevail; it is enough to conclude that, on this record, it cannot. The means used to transmit this trial imposed significant limitations on the viewing public’s ability to observe the proceedings. As the majority points out, no member of the public could see more than part of the jury box, and therefore no member of the public or the public generally could observe all of the jurors or know that all jurors were present throughout the full trial. Of equal or greater significance, no member of the public or the public generally could *247view defendant at counsel table and in attendance at trial. Finally, no member of the public could see the lawyers. Those deviations from the traditional and normal access that the public would have by being physically present burdened defendant’s right to a public trial, even if they did not fully frustrate that right. Because of that burden, the trial court’s decision to close the trial to public attendance had to be supported by a showing of need. Here, no such showing was made.11 would reverse on that reasoning alone.
The majority, however, chooses to venture farther. My first concern is with the four-pronged test for determining whether a proceeding is a public trial that the majority derives from State v. Osborne, 54 Or 289, 103 P 62 (1909). In Osborne, at the request of the prosecutor and over the objection of the defendant, the trial court excluded the public from the courtroom. The issue was whether the defendant had to demonstrate actual prejudice in order to prevail on his claim that he had been deprived of his constitutional right to a public trial. The court held that actual prejudice would be presumed. See also State v. Blake, 53 Or App 906, 913, 633 P2d 831, appeal dismissed 292 Or 486 (1982) (“The Osborne court did not require the defendant to demonstrate actual prejudice. Rather, the court found that once the defendant showed his constitutional right to a public trial had been violated, actual injury would be conclusively presumed.”). The court’s holding in Osborne was based, in part, on the following reasoning:
“It needs but a moment’s reflection to be able to conceive of many ways in which a prisoner deprived of the presence of the public might be injured. In the first place, the mere declaration that the public shall be excluded tends to impress the jury with the enormity of the offense for which the accused is to be tried, carrying with it, to some extent at least, prejudice against the person so charged. It is not an unusual occurrence that some person in an audience attending a trial will upon hearing a narrative of the incidents connected with the crime charged, recall facts to which he will call attention, and thus aid in establishing the *248innocence of the accused. Were the public excluded, however, such aid would not be available, and the conviction of the innocent might result. Again, the presence of friends of the accused often serves to impress the jury favorably, and to that extent, at least, counteract the prejudice usually incident to being accused of an offense which the court may think the public should not hear.” Osborne, 54 Or at 296-97.
Based on the above discussion, the majority crafts a four-pronged test for determining whether or not a trial is public. The majority is right that those are pertinent concerns that underlie the need for a public trial. But there is no indication in Osborne that those concerns were intended to be a formula for deciding whether a defendant’s trial was a public one. Further, the majority leaves unanswered several significant questions concerning how its test is to work. Must a proceeding fully satisfy all prongs of the test to be a public trial? Are some of the prongs more important than others? What if some prongs are not satisfied, but others are? What if the interests that underlie the prong are furthered to some degree, just not fully? Here, applying its four-pronged test, the majority concludes that a live television transmission of a trial does not serve some interests —i.e., to “inspire the confidence of a distrustful public.” 178 Or App at 242—and simply expresses uncertainty as to others, i.e., “[i]t is certainly possible that conducting the trial [under those circumstances] could have affected the testimony of both prosecution and defense witnesses.” Id. at 244 (emphasis added). Which of those conclusions makes this not a public trial? In my opinion, the concerns expressed in Osborne were not intended to be and should not be characterized and applied as a constitutional litmus test.
I am also troubled by the majority’s flat declaration that transmitting a trial live to the public — not just in this instance, but in all instances — does nothing to advance any interest inhering in the right to a public trial. In effect, the majority holds that public observation of a trial via live television transmission is no better than no public observation at all. That holding defies common sense and common experience. We are a society that is highly reliant upon and, for the most part, trusting of the images conveyed via live media. Radio and television permeate our daily lives and are the *249means by which we gain much of our information about the world and its most important events. Depending on how available technology is implemented, a live television transmission of a trial has the potential to make the proceedings far more open and public — indeed, notoriously so — than they would be otherwise. As members of the generation that lived through the televised criminal trial of O.J. Simpson, we have experienced that reality first-hand. To be sure, unlike the O.J. Simpson trial, here no member of the public was allowed physically to be present to observe the proceedings. Because of that, some showing of need was required before defendant’s right to a public trial could be burdened as it was in this case. But, contrary to the majority’s analysis, neither this nor any other trial that is transmitted live to the public can be fairly equated with a clandestine proceeding held behind closed doors and “cloaked” in total secrecy. Here, the doors may have been closed but the windows were open.
By treating that distinction as one that makes no difference, the majority skews the legal analysis for other cases. The degree to which a defendant’s right to a public trial constitutionally may be burdened should depend on the strength and character of the need to limit public attendance at the trial. The inquiry, moreover, should allow for an assessment of steps a court might take, short of total closure of a trial, that would give the public a meaningful opportunity to observe the proceedings, even if the opportunity is not the same or as complete as physical attendance in the courtroom. See generally Waller, 467 US at 48.2 The majority’s decision in this case, however, leaves a trial court judge faced with safety and security concerns with an all-or-nothing choice: open the courtroom or close it. The majority thus forecloses the possibility that a live television transmission of a trial could be implemented as a reasonable alternative to complete closure, one that imposes less of a burden on a defendant’s right to a public trial and, as a result, can be *250implemented on a less stringent or different showing of need than a complete lack of public access would require. In doing so, the majority has eliminated important middle ground in the daily efforts of trial courts to address the difficult and increasingly challenging problems of courtroom security and witness safety, and it has done so when the constitutional principles at work do not.
For those reasons, I respectfully concur.

 Secondarily, the state argues that the need for closing the trial can be inferred from the record. I agree fully with the majority’s analysis on that point. See 178 Or App at 244-45.

 Under Waller, the federal analysis requires four factors to be satisfied before a courtroom may be closed: (1) “the party seeking to close the hearing must advance an overriding interest that is likely to be prejudiced”; (2) “the closure must be no broader than necessary to protect that interest”; (3) “the trial court must consider reasonable alternatives to closing the proceeding”; and (4) the court “must make findings adequate to support the closure.” 467 US at 48.