Waller v. Georgia

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…