Court Opinion

ID: 9472144
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 03:51:13.285507+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:42:46.475486
License: Public Domain

MacMAHON, District Judge,
dissenting:
Respectfully, I dissent. I believe that the majority strays too far from the reasoning of the Supreme Court in Gannett Co. v. DePasquale, 443 U.S. 368, 99 S.Ct. 2898, 61 L.Ed.2d 608 (1979) (Stewart, J., majority opinion) — the only Supreme Court decision squarely addressing the issue of public and press access to pretrial suppression hearings.
I.
Writing for the majority in Gannett Co., Justice Stewart flatly rejected any Sixth Amendment right of access and declined to decide whether access was mandated by the First Amendment. Id. at 392, 99 S.Ct. at 2911, Chief Justice Burger concurred and wrote to emphasize the long-standing historical distinction between trials and pretrial proceedings and, perhaps more significantly, the practical distii.ction between trials and suppression hearings. Id. at 394-96, 99 S.Ct. at 2912-13. As the Chief Justice stated: “To make public the evidence developed in a motion to suppress evidence [citation omitted] would, so long as the exclusionary rule is not modified, introduce a new dimension to the problem of conducting fair trials'.” Id. at 396, 99 S.Ct. at 2913.
Justice Rehnquist, in his concurrence, flatly rejected the First Amendment access argument, noting the consistent line of Supreme Court cases rejecting the notion that the public, in its own right or through a surrogate press, has a First Amendment right of access to government proceedings. Id. at 404, 99 S.Ct. at 2918.
Even Justice Blackmun, writing for the dissenters, did not find any First Amendment right of access to suppression hearings. Id. at 411, 99 S.Ct. at 2921 (joined by Justices Brennan, White and Marshall). Only Justice Powell viewed the First Amendment as guaranteeing such a right, and that right was strictly qualified, was carefully tailored to the realities of criminal trials, and gave due deference to the proximity and informed judgment of the trial judge. Id. at 397, 399-403, 99 S.Ct. at 2914, 2915-2917.
Recognizing that the only apposite Supreme Court decision, Gannett Co., supra, “provided scant encouragement for a First Amendment claim,” ante, at 96, the ma*104jority embarks on a painstaking search for the philosopher’s stone in subsequent Supreme Court decisions dealing with closure issues. And although the stone is not to be found, the majority does stitch together a quilt of isolated phrases from which it derives a “functional argument” in support of constitutionally guaranteed access to suppression hearings. Ante, at 97, 98.
I believe, however, that this patchwork is of little predictive value because it ignores the determinative fact that the three closure cases which followed Gannett Co. address only the closure of trial proceedings. Those cases do not involve the closure of preliminary suppression hearings which, unlike trials, have no common law history of public access and which, because of the substance and timing of the hearing, may well implicate the defendant’s right to a fair trial, and, in some instances, pose a threat to his safety and even to his life.
A further difficulty with implying a right of access to suppression hearings on the basis of a “functional argument” analysis is that “ ‘the stretch of this protection is theoretically endless,’ .... For so far as the participating citizen’s need for information is concerned, ‘there are few restrictions on action which could not be clothed by ingenious argument in the garb of decreased data flow.’ Zemel v. Rusk, [381 U.S. 1, 16-17, 85 S.Ct. 1271, 1280, 1281, 14 L.Ed.2d 179 (1965) (Warren, C.J.) ].” Richmond Newspapers, Inc. v. Virginia, 448 U.S. 555, 588, 100 S.Ct. 2814, 2833, 65 L.Ed.2d 973 (1980) (Brennan, J., concurring).
Obviously, as suggested by Justice Brennan, supra, there must be a practical limit to the nooks and crannies of criminal proceedings and the criminal justice system into which a “functional argument” rationale inevitably leads. And those sitting on the Supreme Court, except for Justice Powell, have either rejected the extension of this rationale to' suppression hearings or been careful to avoid the suggestion that the “functional argument” necessarily requires access to suppression hearings. For example, while the majority places Justice O’Connor in the “functional argument” camp, ante, at 98, she explicity stated that her concurrence in Globe Newspaper was based on the fact that the closure order in question involved a criminal trial. She further stated that, in her opinion, the Court’s decision, as well as its prior decision in Richmond Newspapers, Inc., did not “carry any implication outside the context of criminal trials." Globe Newspaper Co. v. Superior Court, 457 U.S. 596, 611, 102 S.Ct. 2613, 2623, 73 L.Ed.2d 248 (1982) (emphasis added).
Even after accepting a “functional argument” rationale for access to some aspects of judicial proceedings, it is clear that a line must be drawn. However, the majority believes “[i]t makes little sense to recognize a right of public access to criminal courts and then limit that right to the trial phase of a criminal proceeding....” Ante, at 98.
Yet, access to sealed court documents, to plea bargaining sessions, to prisons, to information within the government’s control, and to the decision-making processes within government offices and agencies, e.g., the district attorney’s office, probation departments, and parole boards, would substantially enhance public discussion and knowledge of the criminal justice system. Nevertheless, traditionally none of these areas has been open to the public, nor are they likely to be made so in the future. See, e.g., Branzburg v. Hayes, 408 U.S. 665, 684, 92 S.Ct. 2646, 33 L.Ed.2d 626 (1972) (“Despite the fact that news gathering may be hampered, the press is regularly excluded from grand jury proceedings, our own conferences, the meetings of other official bodies gathered in executive session, and the meetings of private organizations.”) See also Gannett Co., supra, 443 U.S. at 404-05, 99 S.Ct. at 2918-19 (and cases cited therein); Houchins v. KQED, Inc., 438 U.S. 1, 11-12, 15, 98 S.Ct. 2588, 2594-2596, 2597, 57 L.Ed.2d 553 (1978) (prisons; First Amendment does not “mandat[e] a right of access to government information or sources of information within the government’s control”).
*105Suppression hearings stem from a judicially created rule and are a relatively recent development; they have never been considered part of the trial of a criminal case. See generally Gannett Co., supra, 443 U.S. at 387-91, 394-97, 99 S.Ct. at 2912-14. Reference to historical practice is especially valuable in delimiting, as we are today, the scope of a newly recognized constitutional guarantee. Therefore, the long-standing historical dichotomy between trial and pretrial proceedings bears forcefully on the issue of access.
However, the reason for holding suppression hearings outside the vortex created by the majority’s “functional argument” rationale for access is not limited to a purely historical argument. A preliminary suppression hearing, compared to a criminal trial, presents a sparse.and much less compelling text from which the public might glean a greater understanding of the administration of criminal justice in our society. In the trial of a criminal case, the government exercises one of the most awesome powers delegated to government in a free society: the power of the state to prosecute and punish an individual for his or her conduct. Clearly, in this context, there is a compelling argúment that the process by which the government brings this formidable power to bear on an individual should be open to public scrutiny.
In a suppression hearing, however, the issue is not the guilt and punishment of an individual. Rather, the narrow inquiry is strictly limited to the technical, and usually pro forma, question of the propriety of police conduct. More often than not, the motion to suppress is either patently merit-less or crumbles under the slightest scrutiny. In the less frequent case where a motion to suppress is granted, the result is not deprivation of life, liberty, or property, but rather the simple exclusion of the illegally obtained evidence.
Constitutionally required access to pretrial suppression hearings also raises acute practical and constitutional concerns. In Richmond Newspapers, Inc., supra, 448 U.S. at 588, 100 S.Ct. at 2833, Justice Brennan aptly observed: “The judicial task is as much a matter of sensitivity to practical necessity as it is of abstract reasoning.” This is particularly true when charting the appropriate contours of a right which has only recently been recognized and which derives from a “functional” analysis of the First Amendment protections and “penumbral” guarantees.
Addressing both practical and constitutional concerns, it is clear that publicity in the context of a pretrial suppression hearing poses a double-edged threat: the intended effect of the exclusionary rule may, as a practical matter, be circumvented, and insuring a fair trial will, at best, become considerably more difficult and unduly time consuming. Similar concerns did not go unnoticed by Justice Stewart:
“Publicity concerning pretrial suppression hearings ... poses special risks of unfairness. The whole purpose of such hearings is to screen out unrealiable or illegally obtained evidence and insure that this evidence does not become known to the jury. Cf. Jackson v. Denno, 378 U.S. 368 [84 S.Ct. 1774, 12 L.Ed.2d 908, (1964)]. 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.” Gannett Co., supra, 443 U.S. at 378-79, 99 S.Ct. at 2904-05 (footnote omitted).
Chief Justice Burger has expressed a similar concern; specifically, the special nature of a suppression hearing raises signifi*106cant fair trial complications which are simply not present in the context of access to criminal proceedings:
“When the Sixth Amendment was written, and for more than a century after that, no one could have conceived that the exclusionary rule and pretrial motions to suppress evidence would be part of our criminal jurisprudence. The authors of the Constitution, imaginative, farsighted, and perceptive as they were, could not conceivably have anticipated the paradox inherent in a judge-made rule of evidence that excludes undoubted truth from the truth-finding processes of the adversary system. Nevertheless, as of now, we are confronted not with a legal theory but with the reality of the unique strictures of the exclusionary rule, and they must be taken into account in this setting. To make public the evidence developed in a motion to suppress evidence, cf. Brewer v. Williams, 430 U.S. 387 [97 S.Ct. 1232, 51 L.Ed.2d 424] (1977), would, so long as the exclusionary rule is not modified, introduce a new dimension to the problem of conducting fair trials.” Id. at 395-96, 99 S.Ct. at 2913-14.
Pretrial publicity which focuses on suppression hearings will, at a minimum, further complicate and prolong the voir dire. The trial will then be further sidetracked, frequently on the eve or even the first day of the trial, while the court not only assesses the nature and extent of suppression hearing publicity but also undertakes the tortuous analysis to which today’s majority subjects the district court’s ruling. Moreover, if the jury has not been empanelled prior to suppression hearing publicity, a long continuance or change of venue might be required. Of course, this decision itself will entail additional delay. Even if the jury has been empanelled prior to the hearing, a decision must be made whether the potential publicity might be such as to require sequestration prior to the hearing. And, where the jury has been empanelled but not sequestered prior to the hearing, publicity from the hearing will raise the issue of prejudice. The court must then pause to consider, at a minimum, whether additional voir dire of the jurors is necessary.
The majority seems to suggest that these problems might be avoided simply by tailoring the closure order to avoid the perceived risks. Ante, at 101. However, this requirement places a great burden on the trial court where, as in this case, none of the parties, including the media representatives, suggested an alternative other than closed or open proceedings. In any event, affording the trial court the opportunity to tailor its order does not eliminate the potential for delay. The court must still undertake an elaborate “realistic risk” evaluation; next, alternatives must be developed and considered; finally, an opinion must be rendered articulating with great care the basis for whatever degree of closure is ordered. Following this time-consuming procedure, the ruling is still subject to appellate review and the attendant delay and, ironically, is now open to attack on many more grounds than those available before today’s decision. Thus, the effect of the rule which the majority adopts is to undercut the fair and speedy trial of criminal cases explicitly guaranteed by the Constitution while increasing costs to the parties, the court, and, ultimately, to the public purse.
Based on a comparison between the values implicated in a criminal trial and those in a suppression hearing, as well as the acute practical and constitutional difficulties arising from open suppression hearings, I believe that a distinction between trials and pretrial suppression hearings is fully warranted for First Amendment purposes.
In summary, the Supreme Court refused to find a First Amendment right of access to suppression hearings in Gannett Co., supra, the Court’s only case addressing the issue. Furthermore, in Richmond Newspapers, Inc., supra, and subsequent trial closure cases, a majority of the Court punctiliously confined the “functional argument” rationale to trials. Finally, the his*107tory of pretrial hearings, the limited function and scope of suppression hearings, and the probability that access to such hearings will exacerbate constitutional and practical problems at trial provide a sound basis for continuing to exclude suppression hearings from a First Amendment right of access.
II.
Finally, the district court’s closure order should be affirmed even if we apply the majority’s standard and requirement of articulated findings. The district court, consistent with the majority’s opinion, recognized a right of public access to pretrial suppression hearings under the First Amendment. The court was intimately familiar with the case, its context, and its broader implications. The court fully considered the motion papers, briefs, and other relevant documents. The court heard oral argument from all parties, including the press, and even reconsidered its order following the submission of briefs by the press. The court then applied the appropriate balancing test: “In this case the potential for harm to this defendant, as well as the tainting of any future proceedings by pretrial disclosures I think outweighs the right of the public at this time and the press to attend this hearing.”
The district court’s reasons for closure are specific. ' Moreover, uncontradicted facts in the sealed record before us manifestly support a conclusion that an open hearing presented a “realistic risk” of prejudice or harm to the defendant.1 Thus, the district court’s ruling in open court and the sealed record clearly “supply a sufficient basis for appellate review.” Ante, at 100. The district court might have facilitated review by expressly marshalling the evidence constituting the factual basis for its conclusion. But “articulated” findings surely do not require the district court to labor the obvious or to write reams supporting its conclusion. The sealed motion papers unmistakably set forth a specific, uncontradicted, and highly compelling factual basis for closure. To require more is to exalt form over substance.
The majority addresses the district court’s concern over the potential for prejudicial pretrial publicity but queries “whether the information sought to be kept confidential has already been given sufficient public exposure to preclude a closure order on this account.” Ante, at 101. On this point, however, the majority gives no weight to the district court’s first-hand knowledge and evaluation of the extent and impact of local publicity. Nor does the majority adequately consider the fact that continued publicity, even though involving previously published information, will likely result in wider circulation of the information and may well rekindle public emotion in the community.2 As a result, defendant’s fair trial concerns become more compelling, and the court’s ability to assure a fair trial becomes more suspect.
I would affirm.

. As noted, supra, Part I at 106, none of the parties opposing closure presented any alternative to closure other than holding an open hearing. I believe that, after a "realistic risk” showing by the proponent of closure, "members of the press and public who object to closure have the responsibility of showing to the court’s satisfaction that alternative procedures are available that would eliminate the dangers shown by the defendant.....” Gannett Co., supra, 443 U.S. at 401, 99 S.Ct. at 2916 (Powell, J., concurring). Moreover, in this case, as in Gannett Co., the district court was faced with the "unsettled state of the law [on the issue of access] ... and the uncertain nature of the claims [made by the government and the press]....” Id. at 402-03 n. 4, 99 S.Ct. at 2917, 2918 n. 4. Under these circumstances, "there was no material deviation” from the majority’s standard and procedural requirements. Cf. id.

. Discounting the possible cumulative effect of the publicity is inconsistent with the precept of "our criminal justice system [which] permits, and even encourages, trial judges to be overcautious in ensuring that a defendant will receive a fair trial.” Gannett Co. v. DePasquale, 443 U.S. 368, 379 n. 6, 99 S.Ct. 2898, 2905 n. 6, 61 L.Ed.2d 608 (1979) (Stewart, J.) (majority opinion).