Appellate Court Is Asked to Unseal Jackson Papers

Ten news organizations are asking an appellate court to order the unsealing of documents in the Michael Jackson case, including a grand jury transcript and much of the indictment that charges the entertainer with child molestation.

In a motion filed Thursday with the 2nd District Court of Appeal in Ventura, media attorney Theodore Boutrous criticized the “unique and extraordinary procedures” that have largely kept even routine documents secret in the case.

Santa Barbara County Superior Court Judge Rodney Melville has “established a presumption of secrecy, in clear violation of 1st Amendment principles,” contends the motion by major media outlets, including the Los Angeles Times.

Melville has sealed at least 47 search warrants and numerous motions from the prosecution and the defense. The indictment handed down by a grand jury in April has large portions blotted out, including details of the alleged molestation and the names of people who allegedly conspired with Jackson to cover it up.

Without explanation, the judge this week granted a defense request to seal its motion for a delay in the trial, which is scheduled to start Sept. 13.

In court, Melville has said that denying public access to ordinarily public documents and imposing a gag order on attorneys would help guarantee Jackson a fair trial.

But such reasoning has been struck down by appellate courts in other cases, according to some legal experts.

Trial judges are often required to offer more specific reasons about how the release of particular materials might prejudice potential jurors, said Gary Hengstler, director of the National Center for the Courts and Media.

“General statements about fundamental fairness may not hold up on appeal,” he said. “What if a judge were to say, ‘I’m going to close this entire proceeding to the public in the interests of fairness?’ ”

Wary of making mistakes in trials intensely followed around the globe, judges in some celebrity cases have been cautious to a fault, Hengstler said.

“They don’t want to be the subject of judicial seminars on how their case was handled,” said Hengstler, whose center was started to find common ground for judges and reporters after the O.J. Simpson trial.

The immediate purpose of Thursday’s motion was to ask the appellate court for a speeded-up hearing. Boutrous suggested Aug. 10, six days before attorneys in the Jackson case are to square off over a number of critical -- and still largely secret -- motions.

Thursday’s motion, while procedural, also telegraphed the arguments that Boutrous will be using when he formally asks the appellate court for a decision on the secrecy issue.

Boutrous pointed the judges to a number of cases he believed bolstered his argument.

One involved a palimony lawsuit between actor Clint Eastwood and his former girlfriend, Sondra Locke. In 1999, the California Supreme Court ruled that the trial judge had wrongly excluded the press from hearings held outside the presence of the jury. The judge had explained that he didn’t want jurors tainted by the intense publicity around the case.

That argument makes sense to Jackson’s family, said Debra A. Opri, an attorney for his parents. But she predicted that the appellate court would reverse many of Melville’s secrecy decisions.