More openness in federal court

If you’d like to know more about the three-year prison sentence N.C. House Speaker Jim Black received on political corruption charges back in 2007, that information is just a Google search away.

His sentencing memorandum, a legal document that outlines federal prosecutors’ case for the harshness or leniency of punishment sought, can be found online fairly easily.

If you seek the same insight into the punishment for former Charlotte Mayor Patrick Cannon, felled last year by an FBI corruption probe, you’d be out of luck.

The sentencing memorandum for Cannon is not publicly available. Also unavailable: The sentencing memorandum for former CIA Director David Petraeus, sentenced in Charlotte last month to two years of probation for leaking government secrets.

You can see the sentencing memorandum in Black’s case because it was handled by prosecutors in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina. That district, like other federal court jurisdictions, routinely makes such memorandums publicly available. The Western District of North Carolina, which includes Charlotte’s federal court, takes the unusual step of keeping those documents away from the public.

It’s been that way in the Western District since 2008. Frank Johns, the Western District’s clerk of court, tells the editorial board that with the advent of electronic filing, lawyers were filing documents that failed to redact private information. So the area’s federal courts simply decided to seal all sentencing memorandums.

Johns says the rule has remained in place at least in part because no one has challenged it. He also voiced fears that sensitive information such as the names of cooperating witnesses could fall into the wrong hands.

But if other courts can redact these documents and release them without imperiling sensitive information, surely we can do so here, too. The Observer is now challenging the rule, with court motions seeking to unseal the sentencing memorandums and related documents in the Cannon and Petraeus cases.

The American criminal justice system is built around the premise that transparency enhances the public’s confidence in its courts. That cause would be well-served by opening up these key documents, which can offer the public a behind-the-curtain glimpse of the debates that help shape the severity of the sentences meted out by judges.

Johns says a local rules panel of lawyers, judges and clerks oversees filing policies. The panel ought to move expeditiously toward unsealing these documents.

This story was originally published May 19, 2015 at 4:12 PM with the headline "More openness in federal court."