Court to Rule on Public Access to Pretrial Hearing

The Supreme Court, in a key test of open courtroom proceedings, agreed Tuesday to decide whether the public and the media have a constitutional right to attend pretrial hearings over objections by a criminal defendant.

The justices said they would review a California case in which reporters and others were barred from a 41-day preliminary hearing for Robert R. Diaz, a nurse later found guilty and sentenced to death for murdering 12 patients with overdoses of heart medicine.

The court will be resolving a question left open after a 1980 ruling that established a First Amendment right of public access to criminal trials and a 1984 decision that extended that right to jury selection.

Rare Circumstances

It said in these two rulings that judges could close such proceedings only in rare circumstances, when they could show that the defendant’s right to a fair trial was in jeopardy and there were no adequate alternatives to guard against prejudicial publicity.

Preliminary hearings play a pivotal role in the criminal justice process, often serving as a kind of “mini-trial” in which witnesses are heard and evidence presented to see whether the prosecution’s case is strong enough to go to trial. Although they traditionally are open, such hearings increasingly have been closed at the request of the defense.

Lawyers for news organizations contend that the presence of the public and the media in such proceedings protects their integrity, ensuring that they are fair and that officials perform their duties. The attorneys note that the overwhelming majority of criminal cases are disposed of through plea bargains or dismissals in proceedings before trial.

Right to Fair Trial

On the other side, defense lawyers argue that judges should have unimpeded authority to close such proceedings to make sure that resulting publicity does not violate the defendant’s right to a fair trial by prejudicing potential jurors.

Courts in 11 states have held that the Constitution affords the public a general right of access to pretrial criminal proceedings. Courts in six states, including California, have held that there is no constitutional guarantee to access.

In the case now before the justices, the Riverside Press-Enterprise--the same paper that won the 1984 ruling on open jury selection--is challenging a ruling by the state Supreme Court last December that held there was no constitutional right of access to preliminary hearings.

The state court, in a 6-1 decision, said that under a new state law that provides for open preliminary hearings, judges still could close proceedings when, in response to a defense motion, they found a “reasonable likelihood of substantial prejudice” against the defendant.

Agree to Hear Case

James D. Ward of Riverside, the attorney for the newspaper, contended in the Press-Enterprise appeal that under such a standard, preliminary hearings would be closed almost routinely, as the rule rather than the exception. The justices agreed to hear the case (Press-Enterprise vs. Superior Court, 84-1560) later this term.

In other actions Tuesday, the justices:

--Agreed to decide whether government authorities can invoke federal wildlife protective laws to prevent American Indians in South Dakota from killing bald eagles on reservation land. At issue is a ruling by a federal appeals court in St. Louis saying that under a treaty between the United States and the Yankton Sioux Indians, tribal members could be prosecuted for selling eagles or their feathers but not for hunting and killing them.

According to the government, Dwight Dion Sr., the defendant in the case (U.S. vs. Dion, 85-246), told undercover investigators that he had killed up to 20 eagles a year.

--In a novel test of the right against unreasonable search and seizure, decided to review the case of Michael Robert Quinn, convicted of drug smuggling in an alleged plot to bring six tons of marijuana into California by boat from Colombia.

A federal appeals court in San Francisco ruled that Quinn had been improperly denied a chance to challenge the legality of the search of the boat that he owned but that he had not been aboard when it was seized. The appeals court, reversing Quinn’s conviction, said his ownership of the vessel and his “possessory interest” in the marijuana gave him the “expectation of privacy” he needed to challenge the validity of the search (U.S. v. Quinn, 84-1717).