Public Trials

Here (thanks to Howard Bashman) is a recent opinion from the Eighth Circuit dealing with the Sixth Amendment's right to a public trial.  During the appellant's trial on sex-abuse charges, the courtroom was cleared whenever the appellant's alleged victims (ages 11 and 12) testified.  In the court's opinion, written by Judge Morris S. Arnold (for whom my wife clerked), there's this:

The government implies in its brief that requiring children to testify in public
in this kind of case could only expose them to voyeuristic or prurient interests. We
believe that this argument is untenable. We have an open government, and secret
trials are inimical to the spirit of a republic, especially when a citizen's liberty is at
stake. The public, in a way, is necessarily a party to every criminal case.

Judge Arnold's brother, Judge Richard S. Arnold (for whom I clerked), was also a real stickler for defendants' confrontation and public-trial rights.  It was interesting for me, at the time, to see how -- contrary to the expectations I'd developed in law school -- the Judge's Hugo Black-esque textualism on constitutional-criminal-procedure matters often moved him to "liberal" or defendant-friendly outcomes.