A federal appeals court Monday vacated a man's gun conviction because a lower court's COVID-19 protocols had precluded the public from observing his trial.
A federal appeals court Monday vacated a man’s gun conviction in a lower court in Northern California because COVID-19 protocols had precluded the public from observing his trial.
As a remedy, the panel remanded Allen’s case back to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California for a new trial. It also ordered that Allen be given a new pretrial hearing to argue for the suppression of certain evidence, as an initial hearing on those matters was similarly held out of public view.
It is unclear what potential implications the appeals court’s ruling could have on other cases held under similar COVID-19-related restrictions, or even how many such trials there have been — either in the District Court for the Northern District of California or elsewhere in the state and country. “The court addresses the questions raised by parties in individual appeals as they come before it,” the spokeswoman said. She otherwise declined to comment, saying the decision “speaks for itself.”
While the lower court “had to strike a balance between protecting a defendant’s public trial right and the goal of stemming the spread of COVID,” and courts can set limited restrictions on access for compelling reasons, Gilliam’s restrictions on visual access to the trial — which he enforced over objections from Allen and his counsel — went too far, the higher court wrote.
The court also wrote that the “failure to make the judge, counsel, defendant and jury subject to the public’s eye undermines confidence in the proceedings.”