U.S. Supreme Court rules that the right to a public trial includes jury selection process.
That nation’s highest court ruled Tuesday that the Sixth Amendment guarantee to “a speedy and public trial” protects a defendants right to an open trial, including the jury selection process.
The Supreme Court’s decision came in the case of Eric Presley v. the State of Georgia and stemmed from a trial judge’s decision to remove Presley’s uncle from the courtroom as the jury selection process in the case was getting underway. Presley was charged, and convicted, of a cocaine trafficking offense.
At the time, the trial judge explained that he was evicting Presley’s uncle because, during jury selection, the prospective jurors would be seated throughout the courtroom and “his uncle cannot sit and intermingle with members of the jury panel.”
On that basis, the judge exercised his discretion to close the courtroom to Presley’s uncle and all other spectators. The Georgia Supreme Court upheld the decision, reasoning that “the trial court certainly had an overriding interest in ensuring that potential jurors heard no inherently prejudicial remarks from observers during voir dire.” (voir dire involves the preliminary questioning of prospective jurors by counsel).
In reversing the Georgia Supreme Court’s decision, the U.S. Supreme Court’s unsigned opinion emphasized that both the First Amendment and Sixth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution argue in favor of opening court house doors to all trial proceedings, including jury selection.
The issue of the press’s right to access to the jury selection process, the decision noted, was settled in a 1984 case. But the right from the defendants perspective was also taken up in 1984, in an earlier case originating in Georgia, Waller v. Georgia. In reference to Waller, the new court opinion states: “It [the Supreme Court in Waller] ruled that the pretrial suppression hearing must be open to the public because ‘there can be little doubt that the explicit Sixth Amendment right of the accused is no less protective of a public trial than the implicit First Amendment right of the press and the public.”
In standards established in the Waller case, the new decision states, the burden is on the party seeking to close a hearing to show that reasonable alternatives are considered and that findings must be made “adequate to support the closure.”
“In upholding exclusion of the public at juror voir dire in the instant case [Presley], the Supreme Court of Georgia concluded, despite our explicit statements to the contrary, that trial courts need not consider alternatives to closure absent an opposing party’s proffer of some alternatives.”
But the correct interpretation of the earlier cases, the court wrote, is that ‘[t]he public has a right to be present whether or not any party has asserted the right,” and that “[n]othing in the record shows that the trial court could not have accommodated the public at Presley’s trial.
Justices Thomas and Scalia dissented from Tuesday’s decision.
–CFJ
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