Partial Closure of Courtroom During Testimony of Undercover Police Okay
he Second Department determined partial closure of the courtroom during the testimony of undercover police detectives was proper:
…[T]he court providently adopted a reasonable alternative to full closure of the courtroom, excluding the general public and allowing the defendant’s sister and the defendant’s friend to be present during the testimony of the two undercover detectives, and placing a blackboard in front of the detectives so as to shield their identities from the sister and the friend. The two undercover detectives testified at a Hinton hearing … that they had conducted a long-term undercover operation in the particular housing project where the defendant had been arrested, and that there were unapprehended or “lost” subjects from that investigation. Further, they both testified that they had been threatened by subjects in the past and their safety would be jeopardized if their identities were revealed, that they both planned to conduct future narcotics operations in the area and that one detective planned to return to the particular housing project, that they currently had pending cases in the courthouse in which they were testifying, and that they took special precautions when testifying in court so as to protect their identities. Contrary to the defendant’s contention, this testimony exceeded mere “unparticularized impressions of the vicissitudes of undercover narcotics work in general” and included particularized references to their own work which established a specific link between their safety concerns and open-court testimony in this case … . People v Tate, 2013 NY Slip Op 06882, 2nd Dept 10-23-13