Public interest plays a significant and often decisive role in a military judge’s decision to deny a motion to close a court-martial to the public. The Sixth Amendment guarantees an accused the right to a “public trial,” and the First Amendment provides the public and the press a qualified right of access to judicial proceedings. These rights create a strong presumption that a court-martial should be open to the public.
A defense attorney might file a motion to close the trial, or parts of it, to protect their client from prejudicial pretrial publicity or to protect the privacy of witnesses in a sensitive case, like one involving sexual assault. However, the military judge must balance this against the strong public interest in the transparency and accountability of the military justice system. The public has a right to see that justice is being administered fairly, especially when a serious crime is alleged.
To deny a motion for closure, the judge will typically find that the public’s right of access and the accused’s own right to a public trial outweigh the specific privacy or prejudice concerns raised by the defense. The judge may use other, less drastic measures to protect the trial’s fairness, such as sequestering the panel members, issuing a gag order to the parties, or carefully questioning the panel members during voir dire to weed out any who have been biased by publicity. In most cases, the strong public interest in an open and transparent judicial process will lead a judge to deny a motion for complete trial closure.