The case that wasn't there
While still in prison in January 2002, Bellahouel filed a legal challenge to his custody. That's when the real secrecy began.
The case was assigned to U.S. District Judge Paul C. Huck in Miami, yet the grounds of the petition are unknown because all documents have been sealed.
For more than a year, the petition -- known as a "writ of habeas corpus" -- was litigated in absolute secrecy, even as it made its way to the U.S. Court of Appeals in Atlanta (11th Cir.). Every pleading was filed under seal. Every hearing was held in a closed courtroom. Most remarkably, the case's very existence was withheld from the public docket. In short, there was literally no public record that Bellahouel had brought a case.
Notably, the Eleventh Circuit, in which the U.S. District Court in Miami is located, is one of the few courts in the country that has explicit precedent banning the use of secret dockets. In the 1993 bribery case United States v. Valenti, the court ruled that recording proceedings on a nonpublic docket is a violation of the First Amendment because doing so "can effectively preclude the public and the press from seeking to exercise their constitutional right of access" to judicial proceedings.
To read more, go to
http://www.rcfp.org/news/mag/28-1/cov-blackout.html
Posted by Hannah at October 20, 2004 10:37 AM