Closing Courtroom Doors During Closing Arguments is (Again) “Too Trivial” to Implicate Right to Public Trial.

State v. Silvernail, Minn.S.Ct., 5/31/2013.  A jury convicted Mr. Silvernail of first degree premeditated murder.  He argued on appeal that the state failed to prove that he murdered the victim, Lori Roberts.  He also argued that the trial court committed reversible error by locking the courtroom doors before the state began its closing argument.

Justice Page concluded that the state’s evidence was sufficient to uphold the conviction.  There were no witnesses to the murder so that made the state’s case circumstantial.  However, the police did discover blood from the victim on Mr. Silvernail’s clothes, and two jail house snitches claimed that Mr. Silvernail confessed to them, both of which are direct evidence of his commission of the crime.  The court ducked the legal question of what standard of review applied when the state’s proof was both direct and circumstantial by saying that even under the more favorable circumstantial evidence standard the state’s proof was enough. 

Justice Stras, concurring and joined by Justice Dietzen, calls out the majority for not doing the heavy lifting on the sufficiency of evidence standard.  He opines that the circumstantial evidence standard never should apply to the court’s review of an element of a criminal offense that the state has proven by direct evidence.  Ever the grammarian, Justice Stras would parse the proof into the appropriate offense element.  Elements proven by direct evidence are reviewed under “the traditional standard” an elements proven by circumstantial evidence are reviewed under the Ortega two step.  State v. Ortega, 813 N.W.2d 86 (Minn. 2012). 

On the courtroom closure question, the court said that this closure was “too trivial” to violate Mr. Silvernail’s right to a public trial.  See State v Lindsey, 632 N.W.2d 652 (Minn. 2001); State v. Brown, 815 N.W.2d 609 (Minn. 2012). 

Justice Paul Anderson dissented on closing the courtroom doors.  On his own way out the door, Justice Anderson would have remanded the case back for a new trial.  The U.S. Supreme Court declared in Waller v. Georgia, 467 U.S. 39 (1984) what has to be established in order to shut the courtroom doors: an overriding interest (to the party seeking closure) likely to be prejudiced; closure must be no broader that necessary to protect that overriding interest asserted; the court must consider reasonable alternatives; and the court must make adequate findings to support the closure.  The Justice says not one of these factors was met here.  Justice Anderson also drops in a footnote that lists the spate of denied petitions for review which raised an issue about courtroom closure.