Constitutional Law—First Amendment Right of Access to Criminal Trials

The Globe Newspaper Company (Globe) made an unsuccessful attempt to gain access to a rape trial conducted in a Massachusetts Superior Court.The trial judge closed the courtroom relying on a Massachusetts statute' that required trial judges to exclude the general public in cases of sexual offenses involving a victim under the age of eighteen.The defendant in this case had been charged with the forcible rape of three minor females.Globe made a motion requesting that the trial court revoke the closure order but it was denied.Injunctive relief was then requested from the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts and that request was also denied.Globe appealed to the United States Supreme Court which remanded for consideration in light of the Court's holding in Richmond Newspapers, Inc. v. Virginia,2 a case establishing that the press has a first amendment constitutional right of access to criminal trials.Again Globe was denied relief, and on appeal from that decision the United States Supreme Court reversed.The United States Supreme Court conceded that the State's interest in protecting the physical and psychological well-being of minors was compelling.However, it held that the mandatory-closure statute was overly broad and not sufficiently tailored to the State's interest to withstand a first amendment attack.The Court further held that the statute violated the first amendment 3 of the United States Constitution.Globe Newspaper Co. v. Superior Court, 102 S. Ct. 2613 (1982).Open public trials are part of the common law tradition.Before the Norman Conquest, cases in England were brought before I. MASS.GEN.LAWS ANN., ch.278, § 16A (West 1981), provides in pertinent part:At the trial of a complaint or indictment for rape, incest, carnal abuse or other crime involving sex, where a minor under eighteen years of age is the person upon, with or against whom the crime is alleged to have been committed,. . . the presiding justice shall exclude the general public from the courtroom, admitting only such persons as may have a direct interest in the case.2. 448 U.S. 555 (1980).3. U.S. CONST.amend.I provides in pertinent part: "Congress shall make no law...