| Before CIA Leaks Trial Joshua Schulte
Lawyers Argue Against Sealing As Inner City
Press Has
By Matthew
Russell Lee, Patreon
BBC
- Decrypt
- LightRead - Honduras
-
Source
SDNY COURTHOUSE,
Jan 25 – Ten days before the
trial of accused CIA leaker
Joshua Schulte, set to begin
February 3, a final pre trial
conference on January 24
showed continuing disputes
about the secrecy and sealing
of evidence and witnesses.
Inner City Press has filed two
fast turn-around letters
opposing the closing of the
courtroom, the denial of a
live feed of the proceeding
such as has permitted live
reporting of the OneCoin /
Mark Scott, Hernandez /
Honduras, #6ix9ine, Rep. Chris
Collins and upcoming Avenatti
proceedings.
Now
Schulte's lawyers say: "One
particularly serious issue
merits this Court's attention.
As we noted in our response
brief, at page 7, "the
Government has failed to
provide any notice of [its]
requested closure to the
public" and "declined to
provide such notice despite
requests by the defense to
file an unclassified version
of its motion on the Court's
public CMIECF docket." It is
black-letter law that there
must be public notice of any
effort to close parts of a
criminal trial sufficiently
far in advance of trial to
permit intervention by
interested members of the
press and public. See In re
The Herald Co., 734 F.2d 93,
102-03 (2d Cir. 1984)
(requiring that a motion for
closure, or notice of such a
motion where a court has
granted leave to seal the
motion, must be docketed
"promptly" and in "detail[1"
sufficient to afford the
general public notice and an
opportunity to challenge the
requested closure); United
States v. Aref, 533 F.3d 72,
81 (2d Cir. 2008); United
States v. Alcantara, 396 F.3d
189, 199-200 (2d Cir. 2005)
(motion should be docketed
"sufficiently in advance of a
hearing" to permit
intervention). There is no
longer sufficient time for the
government to provide adequate
notice to the press and public
of its intended restrictions
on access prior to the start
of trial on February 3, 2020.
Today is January 21, 2020. For
that reason alone, the
requests for proposed closures
should be denied. The press'
failure to receive timely
notice within which they
intervene and challenge could
constitute structural error."
Yes, the request for closures
and denial of live feeds
should be denied. Inner City
Press will make these and
other arguments on January 27
- watch this site.
A basic
PACER search by Inner City
Press finds that Schulte in
April 2019 filed a civil
lawsuit against the US
Attorney General. There is a
docket number: 19-cv-3346.
Photo here.
But even
on the SDNY Press Room PACER
terminal when Inner City Press
clicked on the Complaint, it
replied, "You do not have
permission to view this
document." So who does? And is
this a public court system? We
will have more on this.
Assistant US Attorney Matthew
Laroche argued that while
prospective jurors will be
shown witnesses real names, it
will only by in hard copy and
thereafter some 17 of them
will be referred to by
pseudonyms.
Schulte's
lawyer Sabrina Shroff, still
with the Federal Defenders for
purposes of this case,
insisted on calling these
"fake names," and complained
about the difficulties imposed
in conducting basic research
on potential witnesses.
US Attorney for
the Southern District of New
York Geoffrey S. Berman is
asking to have the public
excluded from the courtroom
during the testimony of
several of these CIA
witnesses: ten called by the
prosecution, and seven the
defense seeks to call.
On January 21,
SDNY District Judge Paul A.
Crotty scheduled a public
hearing on US Attorney
Berman's request, to be held
on January 27 at 2 pm.
Opposition to sealing has
already been filed, see Inner
City Press filing into the
docket on Big Cases Bot, here.
Watch this site. The case is US
v. Schulte, 17-cr-548
(Crotty).
***
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