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Tuesday, November 15, 2005

Law - Secret dockets in Florida federal courts -- is hiding cases continuing?

A very long article from the Florida Daily Business Review is published at Law.com today, headlined "Fla. Federal Judges Slammed for Secret Docketing: Judges have been reprimanded by 11th Circuit for hiding cases -- but is the practice continuing?" Some quotes:

Last month, a three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals chastised judges of the Southern District of Florida for completely hiding cases from public view by placing the cases on a secret court docket. * * *

Now, one of the South Florida federal judges who agreed to hide a case admits that she made a mistake and vows never to do it again. "Judges are not gods," U.S. District Judge Patricia Seitz, a seven-year veteran of the federal bench, said in an interview. * * *

But while Seitz, who sits in Miami, said she would be "surprised" if any more cases now are being supersealed in the Southern District of Florida, other observers say it may still be happening.

"How would you know?" asked Randall Marshall, legal director of the ACLU of Florida, which filed an amicus brief in the 11th Circuit case. "There could be others, definitely."

There is also another reason for concern about whether the federal courts have come clean on the secret dockets issue. In its 84-page ruling in U.S.A v. Juan Nicholas Bergonzoli and Fabio Ochoa-Vasquez, released Oct. 20, the 11th Circuit panel failed to acknowledge that the appellate court itself was deeply implicated in secret docketing. * * *

In March 2003, the Daily Business Review disclosed the existence of the Bellahouel case in the Southern District of Florida. It was not listed on the public court docket. The Review later found a second case, that of Nicholas Bergonzoli, who had been convicted on a drug offense and sentenced to 39 months in prison.

In both cases the public court docket and court record contained no case number, no parties, no facts, no judge, no attorneys and no documents that were publicly accessible. Bellahouel objected to the supersealing, but he and his attorney were placed under gag orders.

Secret docketing makes it virtually impossible for anyone not involved in such cases to know of their existence. Even parties involved in the cases sometimes could not obtain copies of certain matters or access the docket so they could assure themselves as to what documents actually were filed with the court.

Criminal defendants lose the protection of public knowledge of their case. Without court information, there is no way for the public and the news media to hold the courts, prosecutors and parties accountable for their actions. And the public and the news media are deprived of information that could trigger public discussion of important public policy issues, such as the appropriateness of government national security actions.

While there are established procedures in the federal system for sealing information in a publicly docketed case on an individualized basis, there is no procedure for removing a case from the public docket and placing it in an alternative, deep-cover docket. * * *

Why the federal judges involved in these cases were willing to impose such extreme secrecy without proper procedures remains unclear. The judges included U.S. District Judges Huck, Seitz, Donald M. Middlebrooks, K. Michael Moore, William P. Dimitrouleas and Shelby Highsmith; Magistrate Judges Lurana Snow and Ann E. Vitunac; and the three appellate judges who voted in secret in March 2003 to keep Bellahouel's case sealed, Stanley F. Birch Jr., Ed Carnes and Procter Hug Jr. * * *

Even now, Bellahouel's appellate case remains hidden from the public. A search of the electronic federal court database shows no case involving a Bellahouel either in the Southern District of Florida or in the 11th Circuit.

The ILB had another entry on secret dockets on 6/9/04, dealing with secret dockets in Connecticut state courts. A quote from a Law.com report at the time:
A February 2003 article in the [Hartford] Courant reported that some cases were sealed just because prominent individuals had requested it. The article stated that judges "have selectively sealed divorce, paternity and other cases involving fellow judges, celebrities and wealthy CEOs that, for the most part, would play out in full view of the public."

Posted by Marcia Oddi on November 15, 2005 06:28 AM
Posted to General Law Related