The state Court of Appeals is set this month to hear the case of a Bronx man who is appealing his murder conviction and saying a Manhattan judge deprived him of his right to a public trial when she ordered all spectators to leave the courtroom for the second half of his murder trial.
Dwight Reid was convicted of shooting and killing Calvern Wallace in a Harlem bar in 2014. On the fourth day of Reid’s eight-day trial in 2017, Judge Ruth Pickholz ordered all spectators to leave the courtroom, saying there was “cumulative” evidence that people in the gallery were breaking rules and acting in an intimidating way.
“I have felt the stares of the audience towards me,” the judge said, according to court papers. “I feel that the courtroom and the presence – for all those reasons the presence of spectators in the courtroom had a chilling effect on this courtroom and I … don’t believe there is a lesser remedy at this point based on everything that’s happened.”
Reid appealed his second-degree murder conviction, saying the judge should have tried to find out who, if anyone, had been taking photos or acting intimidating and remove only them instead of closing the whole courtroom. In an amicus brief, the New York Civil Liberties Union said the judge may have acted with implicit racial bias when she ordered spectators out, judging some court spectators to be threatening because they were Black.
A judge may close a court if they find doing so is necessary to prevent witness intimidation or to protect the privacy interest of jurors, witnesses or victims, according to the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and Middle Tennessee State University’s Free Speech Center.
“Not only was this sweeping closure an egregious violation of constitutional guarantees of public trials, but the stated rationale for closure raises concerns about racial bias," the NYCLU’s brief says.
Arguments in the case are scheduled for April 25. If the appeal is granted, Reid’s conviction would be overturned and he would be allowed a new trial.
According to legal filings in the case, Reid, who is Black, was entering the second half of his eight-day murder trial, including witness testimonies, summation, the charge, and the verdict, when the prosecutor told Pickholz that photographs had been taken inside the courtroom and posted on Instagram.
Taking photographs inside a courtroom is prohibited in New York unless the photographer has explicit permission from the administrative judge. The prosecutor noted that some of the social media posts seemed to call for the defendant to be freed, court papers say. Later, the prosecutor noted additional posts, including one using the hashtag “#watchwhoyouoffend,” court papers said. The prosecutor told the judge she was “very concerned about this” and asked the judge to close the courtroom.
Pickholz, who is white, told lawyers she had noticed a cellphone in the courtroom, according to court papers. Legal briefs in the case said Pickholz added that people in the courtroom gallery, many of whom were Black, had been staring at her during the trial. “It has been very intimidating in this courtroom,” the judge said according to the prosecutor’s brief. She also said the court stenographer had been “shaken” when she declined to get into an elevator with a group of spectators, and one of them had responded by saying, “Why, you’re afraid of us?”
The judge then cleared the courtroom of all spectators for the remainder of the trial, and posted a court officer outside. The courtroom remained closed for the rest of the trial, including the testimony for five witnesses, closing arguments, the judge’s instructions to the jury and the verdict. Pickholz declined to comment on the case.
The Manhattan district attorney’s office declined to comment on the case, but in its own brief it argued that Reid’s lawyer should have asked for a hearing about whether to close the courtroom. Without that hearing, many of the facts about whether people in the gallery were behaving in a threatening way were never learned, and the facts were not revealed, they said in court papers. They also said that one witness in the case had noticed someone in the audience staring at her “the whole time” and that she was unnerved by it.
NYCLU staff attorney Veronica Salama, who wrote the NYCLU brief, said clearing the courtroom of spectators – especially those who support the defendant – can affect the court's perception of a defendant, especially a person of color.
“We know that the public’s presence in a courtroom does just so much to humanize the criminally accused in front of a jury,” said Salama. “When the jury can look out into the courtroom and see that this person has family and community support inside of the courtroom it is an important reminder that this person is more than just whatever it is that they are being accused of.”
In Reid’s appeal, his lawyer said the judge should have done a more thorough investigation into the photographs to figure out whether they were in fact taken in the courtroom and by whom. The judge could have then barred that person or persons – not everyone – from the courtroom. The appeal also said that the judge should have tried to identify who, if anyone, was staring menacingly, and whether it was affecting the witnesses or jurors in the case.
The NYCLU took the issue a step further.
The brief says the appellate court should consider whether the trial court “may have been motivated by its own implicit prejudices and perceived threats in Black faces where there are none.” Similarly, of the court stenographer’s encounter with the spectators in the elevator, the amicus brief says “One cannot help but ask: If the spectators had been white and dressed in a suit and tie, would the court reporter have been reluctant to enter the elevator with them? Would she have been ‘shaken up’ by their simple question in response to her exhibited hesitancy to enter the elevator?”
“You cannot read a white judge's perceptions of the facial expressions of Black men and women sitting in a courtroom and describing them as intimidating and say that there is not a concern of implicit racial bias here,” said Salama.
