Guy Reffit trial: Defendant’s wife, media and public barred from courtroom for much of first Capitol riot trial
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Judge Dabney Friedrich decided not to allow any members of the public to witness the evidence presentation in person at the historic trial that’s expected to last more than a week. A few are being allowed to watch jury selection, which began Monday, and opening statements.
Guy Reffitt, from Texas, is accused of bringing a gun to the insurrection, battling with police, and afterward threatening his children to keep quiet. He has pleaded not guilty to five charges.
Friedrich cited space concerns due to stringent coronavirus protocols at the federal courthouse in Washington, DC, designed to ensure that jurors and witnesses at trials are spread out from one another. While the courthouse still has strict spacing and masking policies, Washington, DC’s citywide indoor mask requirement ends on Tuesday.
The situation highlights an ongoing struggle in federal courtrooms, which never allow recordings of their proceedings to be broadcast widely, between the integrity of jury trials and court administrators’ attempts to prevent the spread of disease.
The public and media is instead watching audio and video of the courtroom on closed-circuit TVs elsewhere in the courthouse, an alternative that 20 major media outlets said in a request to Friedrich is appreciated but still unacceptable under the Constitution’s provisions for transparency at criminal proceedings.
“Because remote viewing of this historic trial cannot adequately substitute for in-courtroom access, and because it seems likely that even a reconfigured courtroom could accommodate a single journalist in attendance — serving as a representative for both the press and the general public — the Court’s current plan to exclude the press from Courtroom 14 would fall short of its constitutional…
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Source : cnn
