Waller v. Georgia (467 U.S. 39)
U.S. Supreme Court · decided May 21, 1984 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Citation
- 467 U.S. 39 · 104 S. Ct. 2210
- Decided
- May 21, 1984
- Term
- October Term 1983
- Vote
- 9–0
- Majority author
- Justice Powell
- Issue area
- Criminal Procedure
- Disposition
- Reversed and remanded
- Outcome
- Petitioning party won
- Ideological direction
- Liberal
Opinion excerpt
Justice Powell delivered the opinion of the Court. These cases require us to decide the extent to which a hearing on a motion to suppress evidence may be closed to the public over the objection of the défendant consistently with the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendment right to a public trial. I Acting under court authorization, Georgia police placed wiretaps on a number of phones during the last six months of 1981. The taps revealed a large lottery operation involved in gambling on the volume of stocks and bonds traded on the New York Stock Exchange. In early January 1982, law enforcement officers simultaneously executed search warrants at numerous locations, including the homes of petitioners. Petitioners and 35 others were indicted and charged with violating the Georgia Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (Georgia RICO) Act, Ga. Code Ann. §§ 16-14-1 to 16-14-15 (1982 and Supp. 1983), and with commercial gambling and communicating gambling information in violation of Ga. Code Ann. §§ 16-12-22 and 16-12-28 (1982). Prior to the separate trial of petitioners and 13 other defendants, petitioners moved to suppress the wiretaps and the evidence seized during the searches. They asserted, inter alia, that the warrants authorizing the wiretaps were unsupported by probable cause and based on overly general information, that the taps were conducted without adequate supervision,…
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