Star Treatment: Celebrities, Justice and Journalism

Imagine getting your criminal indictment sealed from the public until the day of your arraignment. Blocking the release of a transcript of your interview with police investigators because you say its disclosure invades your privacy. Paying a private judge nearly $75,000 to handle your divorce case and convincing him to seal all the financial records. Persuading a court clerk to conceal your divorce file in a super-secret system hiding more than 100 other cases.

That's exactly what happened in high-profile cases recently. Courts are clamping down on public access to cases involving the rich and famous. And such "star treatment" doesn't just happen in Hollywood. From California to Colorado to Connecticut, courts are shielding documents in high-profile criminal and civilcases at the expense of the public's right to know.

"The celebrity trials of recent years seem to be resulting in a willingness on the part of judges to abandon the very strong presumption in favor of access," said media attorney Thomas B. Kelley, who challenged secret proceedings and documents in the former rape case against NBA all-star Kobe Bryant. "In effect, once the publicity level reaches a certain intensity, [they] presume that access is harmful to the process, at least during the pretrial stages."

The child sexual abuse case against pop superstar Michael Jackson offers an egregious example of star treatment. Long before the trial began in late January, Superior Court Judge Rodney S. Melville issued a gag order on all participants barring them from discussing details of ...

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