The US Supreme Court [official website] ruled [opinion, PDF] Thursday that where there is a public-trial violation during jury selection the defendant must demonstrate prejudice to secure a new trial if the issue is raised as an ineffective-assistance-of-counsel claim. Members of the public were not permitted to enter the courtroom during two days of jury selection for Weaver v. Massachusetts [SCOTUSblog] materials because the room could not accommodate all the potential jurors. The petitioner’s lawyer failed to object to a closed courtroom, a constitutional violation which the court has previously viewed as a structural error. Counsel for petitioner did not know that a closed courtroom was unconstitutional and therefore did not discuss it with his client because the events had transpired before Presley v. Georgia [opinion, PDF], a case that “made it clear that the public-trial right extends to jury selection as well as to other portions of the trial.” The court concluded, “petitioner has not shown a reasonable probability of a different outcome but for counsel’s failure to object, and he has not shown that counsel’s shortcomings led to a fundamentally unfair trial. He is not entitled to a new trial.” Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch and Samuel Alito concurred the opinion. Justices Stephen Breyer and Elena Kagan dissented, stating, “If courts do not presume prejudice when counsel’s deficient performance leads to a structural error, then defendants may well be unable to obtain relief for incompetence that deprived them of basic protections without which a criminal trial cannot reliably serve its function as a vehicle for determination of guilt or innocence.” The dissent concluded, “A showing that an attorney’s constitutionally deficient performance produced a structural error should consequently be enough to entitle a defendant to relief.”

The Supreme Court granted certiorari in Weaver in January and heard oral arguments [JURIST reports] in April.