257 Opinion of the Court. the English Court of Star Chamber,22 and to the French monarchy's abuse of the lettre de cachet.23 All of these institutions obviously symbolized a menace to liberty. In unimportant kind. . . ." 2 Stephen, History of the Criminal Law of England, 402 (1883). The secrecy of the ecclesiastical courts and the civil law courts was often pointed out by commentators who praised the publicity of the common law courts. See e. g., 3 Blackstone, Commentaries *373; 1 Bentham, Rationale of Judicial Evidence, 594-595, 603 (1827). The English common law courts which succeeded to the jurisdiction of the ecclesiastical courts have renounced all claim to hold secret sessions in cases formerly within the ecclesiastical jurisdiction, even in civil suits. See, e. g., Scott v. Scott, [1913] A. C. 417. 22 Davis v. United States, 247 F. 394, 395; Keddington v. State, 19 Ariz. 457, 459, 172 P. 273; Williamson v. Lacy, 86 Me. 80, 82–83, 29 A. 943, 944; Dutton v. State, 123 Md. 373, 387, 91 A. 417, 422; Jenks, The Book of English Law 91 (3d ed. 1932). Some authorities have said that trials in the Star Chamber were public, but that witnesses against the accused were examined privately with no opportunity for him to discredit them. Apparently all authorities agree that the accused himself was grilled in secret, often tortured, in an effort to obtain a confession and that the most objectionable of the Star Chamber's practices was its asserted prerogative to disregard the common law rules of criminal procedure when the occasion demanded. 5 Holdsworth, A History of English Law, 163, 165, 180-197 (2d ed. 1937); Radin, The Right to a Public Trial, 6 Temp. L. Q. 381, 386388; Washburn, The Court of Star Chamber, 12 Am. L. Rev. 21, 25-31. 23 Radin, The Right to a Public Trial, 6 Temp. L. Q. 381, 388. The lettre de cachet was an order of the king that one of his subjects be forthwith imprisoned or exiled without a trial or an opportunity to defend himself. In the eighteenth century they were often issued in blank to local police. Louis XV is supposed to have issued more than 150,000 lettres de cachet during his reign. This device was the principal means employed to prosecute crimes of opinion, although it was also used by the royalty as a convenient method of preventing the public airing of intra-family scandals. Voltaire, Mirabeau and Montesquieu, among others, denounced the use of the lettre de cachet, and it was abolished after the French Revolution, though later temporarily revived by Napoleon. 13 Encyc. Brit. 971; 3 Encyc. Soc. Sci. 137. Opinion of the Court. 333 U.S. the hands of despotic groups each of them had become an instrument for the suppression of political and religious heresies in ruthless disregard of the right of an accused to a fair trial. Whatever other benefits the guarantee to an accused that his trial be conducted in public may confer upon our society," the guarantee has always been recognized as a safeguard against any attempt to employ our courts as instruments of persecution. The knowledge that every criminal trial is subject to contemporaneous review in the forum of public opinion is an effective restraint on possible abuse of judicial power.25 One need not wholly agree with a statement made on the subject by 24 Other benefits attributed to publicity have been: (1) Public trials come to the attention of key witnesses unknown to the parties. These witnesses may then voluntarily come forward and give im portant testimony. 6 Wigmore, Evidence § 1834 (3d ed. 1940); Tanksley v. United States, 145 F. 2d 58, 59.. (2) The spectators learn about their government and acquire confidence in their judicial remedies. 6 Wigmore, Evidence § 1834 (3d ed. 1940); 1 Bentham, Rationale of Judicial Evidence 525 (1827); State v. Keeler, 52 Mont. 205, 156 P. 1080; 20 Harv. L. Rev. 489. 25 Jenks, The Book of English Law 91 (1932); Auld, Comparative Jurisprudence of Criminal Process, 1 U. of Toronto L. J. 82, 99; Radin, The Right to a Public Trial, 6 Temp. L. Q. 381; Criminal Procedure in Scotland and England, 108 Edinburgh Rev. 174, 181182; Holmes, J. in Cowley v. Pulsifer, 137 Mass. 392, 394; State v. Osborne, 54 Ore. 289, 295-297, 103 P. 62, 64-66. People v. Murray, 89 Mich. 276, 286, 50 N. W. 995, 998: "It is for the protection of all persons accused of crime-the innocently accused, that they may not become the victim of an unjust prosecution, as well as the guilty, that they may be awarded a fair trial-that one rule [as to public trials] must be observed and applied to all." Frequently quoted is the statement in 1 Cooley, Constitutional Limitations (8th ed. 1927) at 647: "The requirement of a public trial is for the benefit of the accused; that the public may see he is fairly dealt with and not unjustly condemned, and that the presence of interested spectators may keep his triers keenly alive to a sense of their responsibility and to the importance of their functions . . .. 257 Opinion of the Court. Jeremy Bentham over 120 years ago to appreciate the fear of secret trials felt by him, his predecessors and contemporaries. Bentham said: ". suppose the proceedings court, on the occasion, to to be completely secret, and the consist of no more than a single judge,—that judge will be at once indolent and arbitrary: how corrupt soever his inclination may be, it will find no check, at any rate no tolerably efficient check, to oppose it. Without publicity, all other checks are insufficient: in comparison of publicity, all other checks are of small account. Recordation, appeal, whatever other institutions might present themselves in the character of checks, would be found to operate rather as cloaks than checks; as cloaks in reality, as checks only in appearance. 27 In giving content to the constitutional and statutory commands that an accused be given a public trial, the state and federal courts have differed over what groups of spectators, if any, could properly be excluded from a criminal trial. But, unless in Michigan and in one-man grand jury contempt cases, no court in this country has ever before held, so far as we can find, that an accused can be tried, convicted, and sent to jail, when everybody else is denied entrance to the court, except the judge and his attaches. And without exception all courts have held 28 26 1 Bentham, Rationale of Judicial Evidence 524 (1827). 27 Compare People v. Murray, 89 Mich. 276, 50 N. W. 995; and People v. Yeager, 113 Mich. 228, 71 N. W. 491, with Reagan v. United States, 202 F. 488. For collection and analysis of the cases, see 6 Wigmore, Evidence § 1834 (3d ed. 1940); Orfield, Criminal Procedure from Arrest to Appeal 385-387 (1947); Radin, The Right to a Public Trial, 6 Temp. L. Q. 381, 389-391; Note, 35 Mich. L. Rev. 474; 8 U. of Det. L. J. 129; 156 A. L. R. 265. 28 "For the purposes contemplated by the provision of the constitution, the presence of the officers of the court, men whom [sic], it is safe to say, were under the influence of the court, made the trial no more public than if they too had been excluded." People v. Hartman, 103 Cal. 242, 244, 37 P. 153, 154. Opinion of the Court. 333 U.S. that an accused is at the very least entitled to have his friends, relatives and counsel present, no matter with what offense he may be charged." In Gaines v. Washington, 277 U. S. 81, 85-86, this Court assumed that a criminal trial conducted in secret would violate the procedural requirements of the Fourteenth Amendment's due process clause, although its actual holding there was that no violation had in fact occurred, since the trial court's order barring the general public had not been enforced. Certain proceedings in a judge's chambers, including convictions for contempt of court, have occasionally been countenanced by state courts,30 but there has never been any intimation that all of the public, including the accused's relatives, friends, and counsel, were barred from the trial chamber. In the case before us, the petitioner was called as a witness to testify in secret before a one-man grand jury conducting a grand jury investigation. In the midst of petitioner's testimony the proceedings abruptly changed. The investigation became a "trial," the grand jury became a judge, and the witness became an accused charged with contempt of court-all in secret. Following a charge, conviction and sentence, the petitioner was led away to 29 See, e. g., State v. Beckstead, 96 Utah 528, 88 P. 2d 461 (error to exclude friends and relatives of accused); Benedict v. People, 23 Colo. 126, 46 P. 637 (exclusion of all except witnesses, members of bar and law students upheld); People v. Hall, 51 App. Div. 57, 64 N. Y. S. 433 (exclusion of general public upheld where accused permitted to designate friends who remained). "No court has gone so far as affirmatively to exclude the press." Note, 35 Mich. L. Rev. 474, 476. Even those who deplore the sensationalism of criminal trials and advocate the exclusion of the general public from the courtroom would preserve the rights of the accused by requiring the admission of the press, friends of the accused, and selected members of the community. Radin, The Right to a Public Trial, 6 Temp. L. Q. 381, 394-395; 20 J. Am. Jud. Soc. 83. 30 Cases are collected in 27 Ann. Cas. 35. 257 Opinion of the Court. prison-still without any break in the secrecy. Even in jail, according to undenied allegations, his lawyer was denied an opportunity to see and confer with him. And that was not the end of secrecy. His lawyer filed in the State Supreme Court this habeas corpus proceeding. Even there, the mantle of secrecy enveloped the transaction and the State Supreme Court ordered him sent back to jail without ever having seen a record of his testimony, and without knowing all that took place in the secrecy of the judge's chambers. In view of this nation's historic distrust of secret proceedings, their inherent dangers to freedom, and the universal requirement of our federal and state governments that criminal trials be public, the Fourteenth Amendment's guarantee that no one shall be deprived of his liberty without due process of law means at least that an accused cannot be thus sentenced to prison. Second. We further hold that failure to afford the petitioner a reasonable opportunity to defend himself against the charge of false and evasive swearing was a denial of due process of law. A person's right to reasonable notice of a charge against him, and an opportunity to be heard in his defense-a right to his day in court-are basic in our system of jurisprudence; and these rights include, as a minimum, a right to examine the witnesses against him, to offer testimony, and to be represented by counsel."1 Michigan, not denying the existence of these rights in criminal cases generally, apparently concedes that the summary conviction here would have been a denial of procedural due process but for the nature of the charge, 31 The following decisions of this Court involving various kinds of proceedings are among the multitude that support the above statement: Snyder v. Massachusetts, 291 U. S. 97, 116; Powell v. Alabama, 287 U. S. 45, 68-70; Hovey v. Elliott, 167 U. S. 409, 418; Holden v. Hardy, 169 U. S. 366, 390-391; Morgan v. United States, 304 U. S. 1, 14–15, and cases there cited. |