Oklahoma Pub. Co. v. Dist. Court of Oklahoma Cnty.

• Decision Date: 07 March 1977
• Docket Number: No. 76-867,76-867
• Citation: 97 S.Ct. 1045,51 L.Ed.2d 355,430 U.S. 308
• Parties: OKLAHOMA PUBLISHING COMPANY v.
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

430 U.S. 308

97 S.Ct. 1045

51 L.Ed.2d 355

OKLAHOMA PUBLISHING COMPANY

v DISTRICT COURT IN AND FOR OKLAHOMA COUNTY, Oklahoma, et al.

No. 76-867.

March 7, 1977.

PER CURIAM.

A pretrial order entered by the District Court of Oklahoma County enjoined members of the news media from 'publishing, broadcasting, or disseminating, in any manner, the name or picture of (a) minor child' in connection with a juvenile proceeding involving that child then pending in that court. On application for prohibition and mandamus challenging the order as a prior restraint on the press violative of the First and Fourteenth Amendments, the Supreme Court of the State of Oklahoma sustained the order. This Court entered a stay pending the timely filing and disposition of a petition for cer- tiorari. 429 U.S. 967, 97 S.Ct. 430, 50 L.Ed.2d 578 (1976). We now grant the petition for certiorari and reverse the decision below.

A railroad switchman was fatally shot on July 26, 1976. On July 29, 1976, an 11-year-old boy, Larry Donnell Brewer, appeared at a detention hearing in Oklahoma County Juvenile Court on charges filed by state juvenile authorities alleging delinquency by second-degree murder in the shooting of this switchman. Reporters, including one from petitioner's newspapers, were present in the courtroom during the hearing and learned the juvenile's name. As the boy was escorted from the courthouse to a vehicle, one of petitioner's photographers took his picture. Thereafter, a number of stories using the boy's name and photograph were printed in newspapers within the county, including petitioner's three newspapers in Oklahoma City; radio stations broadcast his name and television stations showed film footage of him and identified him by name.

On August 3, 1976, the juvenile was arraigned at a closed hearing, at which the judge entered the pretrial order involved in this case.¹ Additional news reports identifying the juvenile appeared on August 4 and 5. On August 16, the District Court denied petitioner's motion to quash the order. The Oklahoma Supreme Court then denied petitioner's writ of prohibition and mandamus, relying on Oklahoma statutes providing that juvenile proceedings are to be held in private 'unless specifically ordered by the judge to be conducted in public,' and that juvenile records are open to public inspection 'only by order of the court to persons having a legitimate interest therein.' Okl.Stat.Ann., Tit. 10, §§ 1111, 1125 (Supp.1976).

As we noted in entering our stay of the pretrial order, petitioner does not challenge the constitutionality of the Oklahoma statutes relied on by the court below. Petitioner asks us only to hold that the First and Fourteenth Amendments will not permit a state court to prohibit the publication of widely disseminated information obtained at court proceedings which were in fact open to the public. We think this result is compelled by our recent decisions in Nebraska Press Assn. v. Stuart, 427 U.S. 539, 96 S.Ct. 2791, 49 L.Ed.2d 683 (1976), and Cox Broadcasting Corp. v. Cohn, 420 U.S. 469, 95 S.Ct. 1029, 43 L.Ed.2d 328 (1975).

In Cox Broadcasting the Court held that a State could not impose sanctions on the accurate publication of the name of a rape victim 'which was publicly revealed in connection with the prosecution of the crime.' Id., at 471, 95 S.Ct., at 1034. There, a reporter learned the identity of the victim from an examination of indictments made available by a clerk for his inspection in the courtroom during a recess of court proceedings against the alleged rapists. The Court expressly refrained from intimating a view on any constitutional questions arising from a state policy of denying the public or the press access to official records of juvenile proceedings, id., at 496 n. 26, 95 S.Ct. at 1047, but made clear that the press may not be prohibited from 'truthfully publishing information released to the public in official court records.' Id., at 496, 95 S.Ct., at 1047.

This principle was reaffirmed last Term in Nebraska Press Assn. v. Stuart, supra, which held unconstitutional an order prohibiting the press from publishing certain information tending to show the guilt of a defendant in an impending criminal trial. In Part VI-D of its opinion, the Court focused on the information covered by the order that had been adduced as evidence in a preliminary hearing open to the public and the press; we concluded that, to the extent the order prohibited the publication of such evidence, 'it plainly violated settled principles,' 427 U.S., at 568, 96...