Brandon Z. Miller v. United States

If a court-martial defendant in a sexual assault case seeks to introduce evidence concerning the past sexual activity or predisposition of the alleged victim, Military Rule of Evidence (M.R.E.) 412(c)(2) requires the trial judge to conduct a hearing to determine whether the evidence may be admitted—and to automatically close that hearing to the public, without any case-specific assessment of the need for closing the courtroom. In petitioner’s case, a divided Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces (CAAF) held that this automaticclosure rule does not violate the Sixth Amendment’s Public Trial Clause—solely because Rule 412 hearings are not part of the “trial” the Clause protects, and therefore do not trigger the case-specific analysis for closing pre-trial proceedings that this Court required in Waller v. Georgia, 467 U.S. 39 (1984). The CAAF’s holding, from which Judge Maggs dissented, deepens an existing split of authority among state supreme courts—which have divided, 3-1, over whether automatic closures of comparable pre-trial hearings violate the Sixth Amendment. The question presented is: Whether the Public Trial Clause of the Sixth Amendment requires case-specific determinations of necessity and narrow tailoring before an M.R.E. 412 hearing can be closed to the public.