CA9: Anonymous trial and appellate proceedings

DotD points to U.S. v. Doe from the 9th today.  Read the footnotes first.  It explains how a defendant might be able to seal the proceedings from trial through appeal.  It also contains some stuff about notice of supervised release conditions.  DotD condemns the government for letting this proceeding anonymously. He chides the Republinan-appointees deviating from their bias against defendants.  I see the issue as not so clear cut.  Perhaps these appointees wanted to make things easier for a prosecutor, or the so-called “victims.”  In reality, there are a lot of sealed proceedings out there, but usually both sides agree to it, and I suspect that these judges were well-aware of this, and didn’t want to rock the boat.  In this case, there was no trial, and it seems that a condition of the plea was that the government consented to the sealing.

 

But... a party is free to file a motion to unseal the proceedings.

Update: California Blog of Appeal Takes me to task for referring to the victims as “so-called victims.” My problem with using the word “victim” is that it is overused. In this case, it seems like there area real, identifiable, non-consenting victims that were actually victimized by the defendant. In most of the crimes that I read about (and lordy, I read about a lot of crimes) the “victim” either 1) doesn’t feel that “victimized”; or 2) their injury is really quite attenuated from the defendant’s conduct. In this case (based on the plea agreement), it seems that, yes, the “victims” are “victims” but, this seems to be the exception to the rule. Anyway, I have seen the word “victim” thrown around far so much, that it has lost its meaning. Whatever the case, I am sorry that I came off as insensitive in this case.