Court Opinion

ID: 9475765
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 05:37:12.519351+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:44:54.733691
License: Public Domain

KEARSE, Circuit Judge,
concurring:
I concur in the partial affirmance and in the decision to remand to the district court for further consideration, although I believe we should direct the district court to entertain the petition and reach the merits of the issue of the initial closure of the courtroom. My slight divergence from the majority is based on what I see as the purely legal questions of the effects of the Supreme Court’s recent decisions in Waller v. Georgia, 467 U.S. 39, 104 S.Ct. 2210, 81 L.Ed.2d 31 (1984), and Kuhlmann v. Wilson, — U.S. -, 106 S.Ct. 2616, 91 L.Ed.2d 364 (1986).
It appears to me that Waller v. Georgia, decided after the district court’s denial of the present petition, does reflect a change in the law. The Sixth Amendment provides that “[i]n all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a ... public trial____” It had long been held in the lower federal courts and state courts that this provision, which is applicable to state court prosecutions through the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, In re Oliver, 333 U.S. 257, 273, 68 S.Ct. 499, 507, 92 L.Ed. 682 (1948), generally guarantees the defendant the right not to have the courtroom closed over his objection, absent the need to protect a higher conflicting interest that can only be protected by closure. See, e.g., United States ex rel. Lloyd v. Vincent, 520 F.2d 1272, 1274 (2d Cir.) (“Lloyd ”) (citing cases), cert. denied, 423 U.S. 937, 96 S.Ct. 296, 46 L.Ed.2d 269 (1975). Prior to Waller, however, the lower court decisions such as Lloyd generally did not impose rigorous procedural standards to safeguard that right. Further, the great majority of preWaller Supreme Court cases discussing public trial concerned the desire of the press to attend the broadcast criminal pro*953ceedings, contrary to the wish of the defendant, see, e.g., Richmond Newspapers, Inc. v. Virginia, 448 U.S. 555, 100 S.Ct. 2814, 65 L.Ed.2d 973 (1980); Gannett Co. v. DePasquale, 443 U.S. 368, 99 S.Ct. 2898, 61 L.Ed.2d 608 (1979); Estes v. Texas, 381 U.S. 532, 85 S.Ct. 1628, 14 L.Ed.2d 543 (1965), and had focused primarily on the First Amendment rights of the press and the public rather than on the Sixth Amendment rights of the accused, see Press-Enterprise Co. v. Superior Court, 464 U.S. 501, 516-20, 104 S.Ct. 819, 827-29, 78 L.Ed.2d 629 (1984) (“Press-Enterprise I”) (Stevens, J, concurring); Globe Newspaper Co. v. Superior Court, 457 U.S. 596, 603-07, 102 S.Ct. 2613, 2618-20, 73 L.Ed.2d 248 (1982); Richmond, 448 U.S. at 575-80, 100 S.Ct. at 2826-29 (plurality opinion).
In Press-Enterprise I, decided after the district court issued its decision in this case, the Supreme Court ruled that
[t]he 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.
464 U.S. at 510, 104 S.Ct. at 824; see Press-Enterprise Co. v. Superior Court, — U.S.-, 106 S.Ct. 2735, 2741, 92 L.Ed.2d (1986) (“Press-Enterprise II”) (same); Globe Newspaper Co. v. Superior Court, 457 U.S. at 606-07, 102 S.Ct. at 2619-20. Thus, the Court “made clear that the [First Amendment] right to an open trial may give way in certain cases to other rights or interests, such as ... the government’s interest in inhibiting disclosure of sensitive information,” Waller v. Georgia, 467 U.S. at 45, 104 S.Ct. at 2215; it noted that such circumstances would be rare, and that “the balance of interests must be struck with special care,” id. The Press Enterprise I Court did not consider the extent of the Sixth Amendment right of the defendant or establish specific requirements as to the procedures to be followed by the trial court in balancing the competing interests.
Waller involved a suppression hearing closed over the defendant’s objection, and it called on the Supreme Court to interpret, in that context, the public trial guarantee found in the Sixth Amendment. Noting that it “ha[d] not recently considered the extent of the accused’s right under the Sixth Amendment,” id. at 44, 104 S.Ct. at 2214, the Waller Court adopted the Press-Enterprise I standard to govern cases in which the defendant asserts that his Sixth Amendment right to a public trial has been violated. It ruled that “the party seeking to close the hearing must advance an overriding interest that is likely to be prejudiced, the closure must be no broader than necessary to protect that interest, the trial court must consider reasonable alternatives to closing the proceeding, and it must make findings adequate to support the closure.” 467 U.S. at 48, 104 S.Ct. at 2216; see id. at 45-47, 104 S.Ct. at 2214-2215.
The principles established by Waller with respect to the closure of pretrial proceedings, derived from the Court’s conception of what the Sixth Amendment requires with respect to the openness of trials, apply a fortiori to the criminal trials themselves. These principles, although they do not appear to confer substantive constitutional rights that had not previously been recognized in the lower federal courts, plainly impose procedural requirements more stringent that we had previously held necessary to comply with the Sixth Amendment. For example, in the district court proceedings on both of Jones’s petitions, neither district judge believed that a searching inquiry into the factual basis for the prosecution’s request for closure was required under the Sixth Amendment. In Lloyd, this Court, while recognizing that the defendant’s right must be balanced against other interests that might justify closing the courtroom to the public, had not imposed stringent requirements on the trial courts as to the procedural mechanisms by which the defendant’s rights were to be preserved. We stated that although “the better course would have been for the trial judge to hold an evidentiary hearing, we *954think that it was within the court’s power to make a finding that exclusion was required on the basis of his judicial knowledge of the role of undercover agents.” 520 F.2d at 1275.
Since Waller has established new constitutional standards of criminal procedure, “creating] a protective umbrella serving to enhance a constitutional guarantee,” Michigan v. Payne, 412 U.S. 47, 54, 93 S.Ct. 1966, 1970, 36 L.Ed.2d 736 (1973), I think Jones is entitled, under the ends-of-justice test established by Sanders v. United States, 373 U.S. 1, 15-17, 83 S.Ct. 1068, 1077-78, 10 L.Ed.2d 148 (1963), to have the district court consider the merits of his present habeas petition.
I do not view Kuhlmann v. Wilson, 106 S.Ct. 2616, as having substantially altered Sanders’s ends-of-justice test, which is quoted in the majority opinion, ante at 951. In Wilson, four members of the Court adopted the view that “the ‘ends of justice’ require federal courts to entertain [successive habeas] petitions only where the prisoner supplements his constitutional claim with a colorable showing of factual innocence.” Id. at 2627 (plurality opinion of Powell, J.). Three Justices expressly dissented from this view, however, see id. at 2631, 2634-35 (Brennan, J., dissenting); id. at 2639 (Stevens, J, dissenting); and two others, while agreeing with the result reached by the plurality, declined to join in the parts of the plurality opinion that advocated adding the “colorable showing of factual innocence” requirement to the ends-of-justice test, see id. at 2618. Since less than a majority of the Court has taken the position that the Sanders test is so modified, I would not suggest to the district court, especially in a case involving a constitutional right having value reaching beyond the trial court’s truth-seeking function, that it need not entertain a repetitive writ that is based on intervening developments in the law regarding that right simply because no colorable showing of innocence has been made.
In sum, I would remand to the district court for consideration, in light of Waller v. Georgia, of the merits of the claim that the courtroom was closed during DeSaro’s testimony. I express no view as to whether Jones is entitled to relief from his conviction. I agree with the majority that, in assessing the merits, the district court must consider whether Waller is to be given retroactive application, see Allen v. Hardy, — U.S.-, 106 S.Ct. 2878, 2880, 92 L.Ed.2d 199 (1986); Solem v. Stumes, 465 U.S. 638, 643, 104 S.Ct. 1338, 1341, 79 L.Ed.2d 579 (1984), and if it is to be given such application, whether its effect is such as to warrant the vacation of Jones’s conviction or the granting of other relief.