Constitutional Law

Appeals Court Blocks Anonymous Jury

The media cannot be denied access to names of jurors, the Third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in a corruption trial of a former county coroner.

“The prospect that the press might publish background stories about the jurors is not a legally sufficient reason to withhold the jurors’ names from the public,” wrote Judge D. Brooks Smith. “Although such stories might make some jurors less willing to serve or more distracted from the case, this is a necessary cost of the openness of the judicial process.”

Two newspapers and a television station in Pittsburgh challenged on First Amendment grounds the trial court’s attempt to allow anonymous jurors. In its opinion, the court recognized a traditional right of trial judges to empanel anonymous juries, but said such instances were rare.

Full post as published by ACS Blog on August 10, 2008 (boomark / email).