[342]*342OPINION
FLAHERTY, Justice.
On March 13, 1979 Samuel C. Contakos was convicted in the Court of Common Pleas of the Fourteenth Judicial District, by a jury, of first degree murder and criminal conspiracy. The next day, after hearing evidence as to aggravating and mitigating circumstances, the jury returned a verdict of life imprisonment as the sentence for the murder conviction. Contakos also received a consecutive sentence of five to ten years on the conspiracy conviction. An appeal was taken to this Court, and on February 4,1981, we vacated the judgment of sentence and remanded the case for a determination as to whether the nondisclosure of certain written records of interviews with Commonwealth witnesses who testified at trial was harmless error. On March 25,1982 the trial court issued an order reinstating the judgment of sentence and ruling that the error was harmless. Following the trial court’s reinstatement of judgment of sentence, the instant appeal was taken to this Court, which appeal was specifically allowed by our February 4, 1981 order.
Appellant raises eight assignments of error, but because we agree that reversible error was committed when the trial court cleared the courtroom during part of the trial, we do not address the other matters complained of.1
[343]*343The factual setting of appellant’s claim that reversible error was committed when the trial court closed the trial to the public is as follows. Immediately before the Commonwealth’s chief witness was to testify, the trial judge was notified by the Pennsylvania State Police that an attempt might be made on the life of the next witness. Over defense objection, the trial judge closed the courtroom during the testimony of this one witness, except that members of the media were allowed to be present. It is unclear from the record whether all media personnel were permitted to be in the courtroom, or whether only certain media personnel were admitted. In any event, the trial was closed to the public, including members of appellant’s family, during the testimony of the Commonwealth’s main witness. The question raised on this appeal is whether a segment of a criminal trial may be closed to the public in order to protect the life of a witness, upon reliable information that an attempt might be made on that person’s life.
Appellant asserts the abridgment of his right to a public trial under the First, Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution, and under Art. I Sect. 9 of the Pennsylvania Constitution. Because we hold that the closure in this case was violative of the Pennsylvania Constitution, we do not address the federal claim.
The Pennsylvania Constitution at Article I, section 9, provides: “In all criminal prosecutions the accused hath a right to ... a speedy public trial by an impartial jury of the vicinage,” and Article I, section 11 provides: “All courts shall be open.” Section 11, mandating open courts, has been the law of Pennsylvania for three hundred years. It was present in the Pennsylvania Frame of Government of 1682 and was reaffirmed in § 26 of the Constitution adopted by Pennsylvania in 1776. See Richmond Newspapers v. Virginia, 448 U.S. 555, 568, 100 S.Ct. 2814, 2822, 65 L.Ed.2d 973, 984 (1980), citing Sources of Our Liberties, ed. R. Perry, 217 (1959), 1 B. Schwartz, The Bill of Rights: A Documentary [344]*344History, 140 (1971). Section 9, providing for a “speedy public trial,” was adopted in the Pennsylvania Declaration of Rights in 1776. Schwartz, Id., 265.
The historical basis for public trials and the interests which are protected by provisions such as Pennsylvania’s open trial mandate have been well researched and discussed in two recent opinions of the United States Supreme Court, Gannett Co. v. DePasquale, 443 U.S. 368, 99 S.Ct. 2898, 61 L.Ed.2d 608 (1979), and Richmond Newspapers, Inc. v. Virginia, supra, and can be briefly summarized as follows: generally, to assure the public that justice is done evenhandedly and fairly; to discourage perjury and the misconduct of participants; to prevent decisions based on secret bias or partiality; to prevent individuals from feeling that the law should be taken into the hands of private citizens; to satisfy the natural desire to see justice done; to provide for community catharsis; to promote public confidence in government and assurance that the system of judicial remedy does in fact work; to promote the stability of government by allowing access to its workings, thus assuring citizens that government and the courts are worthy of their continued loyalty and support; to promote an understanding of our system of government and courts.
These considerations, which were applied by the United States Supreme Court in its analysis of the First and Sixth Amendments in Gannett and Richmond Newspapers apply equally to our analysis of Pennsylvania’s constitutional mandate that courts shall be open and that an accused shall have the right to a public trial. We are mindful, as was the Court in Richmond Newspapers, of our virtually unbroken history of public trials and openness in criminal trials. Justice Hugo Black has well expressed the pervasiveness of this tradition:
[W]e have been unable to find a single instance of a criminal trial conducted in camera in any federal, state, or municipal court during the history of this country. Nor have we found any record of even one such secret criminal trial in England since abolition of the Court of Star [345]*345Chamber in 1641, and whether that court ever convicted people secretly is in dispute....
This nation’s accepted practice of guaranteeing a public trial to an accused has its roots in our English common law heritage. The exact date of its origin is obscure, but it likely evolved long before the settlement of our land as an accompaniment of the ancient institution of jury trial.
In re Oliver, 333 U.S. 257, 266, 68 S.Ct. 499, 504, 92 L.Ed. 682 (1948), cited in Richmond Newspapers, supra, 448 U.S. at 573, n. 9, 100 S.Ct. at 2825, n. 9, 65 L.Ed.2d at 987, n. 9.
Pennsylvania, however, has a concern with public trials that goes beyond even the unbroken history of public trials to which Justice Black refers. In Pennsylvania it is specifically and constitutionally mandated that courts shall be open. In other words, the public shall not be excluded from trials, the courts shall not be closed. That members of the media were present during the closure in this case does not satisfy the requirement of openness. While it is true that attendance at a criminal trial is subject to reasonable time, place and manner restrictions, Cf. Richmond Newspapers, supra, at 581, n. 18, 100 S.Ct. at 2829, n. 18, 65 L.Ed.2d at 992, n. 18, the openness mandated by our constitution is not satisfied if only representatives of the media are present in the courtroom. Exclusion of the public would strike at the essence and meaning of our mandate for an open court, for the public counterbalances what might otherwise become a tyranny of the media, and the public and the media together counterbalance the possible emergence of a corrupt or biased judiciary.
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[342]*342OPINION
FLAHERTY, Justice.
On March 13, 1979 Samuel C. Contakos was convicted in the Court of Common Pleas of the Fourteenth Judicial District, by a jury, of first degree murder and criminal conspiracy. The next day, after hearing evidence as to aggravating and mitigating circumstances, the jury returned a verdict of life imprisonment as the sentence for the murder conviction. Contakos also received a consecutive sentence of five to ten years on the conspiracy conviction. An appeal was taken to this Court, and on February 4,1981, we vacated the judgment of sentence and remanded the case for a determination as to whether the nondisclosure of certain written records of interviews with Commonwealth witnesses who testified at trial was harmless error. On March 25,1982 the trial court issued an order reinstating the judgment of sentence and ruling that the error was harmless. Following the trial court’s reinstatement of judgment of sentence, the instant appeal was taken to this Court, which appeal was specifically allowed by our February 4, 1981 order.
Appellant raises eight assignments of error, but because we agree that reversible error was committed when the trial court cleared the courtroom during part of the trial, we do not address the other matters complained of.1
[343]*343The factual setting of appellant’s claim that reversible error was committed when the trial court closed the trial to the public is as follows. Immediately before the Commonwealth’s chief witness was to testify, the trial judge was notified by the Pennsylvania State Police that an attempt might be made on the life of the next witness. Over defense objection, the trial judge closed the courtroom during the testimony of this one witness, except that members of the media were allowed to be present. It is unclear from the record whether all media personnel were permitted to be in the courtroom, or whether only certain media personnel were admitted. In any event, the trial was closed to the public, including members of appellant’s family, during the testimony of the Commonwealth’s main witness. The question raised on this appeal is whether a segment of a criminal trial may be closed to the public in order to protect the life of a witness, upon reliable information that an attempt might be made on that person’s life.
Appellant asserts the abridgment of his right to a public trial under the First, Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution, and under Art. I Sect. 9 of the Pennsylvania Constitution. Because we hold that the closure in this case was violative of the Pennsylvania Constitution, we do not address the federal claim.
The Pennsylvania Constitution at Article I, section 9, provides: “In all criminal prosecutions the accused hath a right to ... a speedy public trial by an impartial jury of the vicinage,” and Article I, section 11 provides: “All courts shall be open.” Section 11, mandating open courts, has been the law of Pennsylvania for three hundred years. It was present in the Pennsylvania Frame of Government of 1682 and was reaffirmed in § 26 of the Constitution adopted by Pennsylvania in 1776. See Richmond Newspapers v. Virginia, 448 U.S. 555, 568, 100 S.Ct. 2814, 2822, 65 L.Ed.2d 973, 984 (1980), citing Sources of Our Liberties, ed. R. Perry, 217 (1959), 1 B. Schwartz, The Bill of Rights: A Documentary [344]*344History, 140 (1971). Section 9, providing for a “speedy public trial,” was adopted in the Pennsylvania Declaration of Rights in 1776. Schwartz, Id., 265.
The historical basis for public trials and the interests which are protected by provisions such as Pennsylvania’s open trial mandate have been well researched and discussed in two recent opinions of the United States Supreme Court, Gannett Co. v. DePasquale, 443 U.S. 368, 99 S.Ct. 2898, 61 L.Ed.2d 608 (1979), and Richmond Newspapers, Inc. v. Virginia, supra, and can be briefly summarized as follows: generally, to assure the public that justice is done evenhandedly and fairly; to discourage perjury and the misconduct of participants; to prevent decisions based on secret bias or partiality; to prevent individuals from feeling that the law should be taken into the hands of private citizens; to satisfy the natural desire to see justice done; to provide for community catharsis; to promote public confidence in government and assurance that the system of judicial remedy does in fact work; to promote the stability of government by allowing access to its workings, thus assuring citizens that government and the courts are worthy of their continued loyalty and support; to promote an understanding of our system of government and courts.
These considerations, which were applied by the United States Supreme Court in its analysis of the First and Sixth Amendments in Gannett and Richmond Newspapers apply equally to our analysis of Pennsylvania’s constitutional mandate that courts shall be open and that an accused shall have the right to a public trial. We are mindful, as was the Court in Richmond Newspapers, of our virtually unbroken history of public trials and openness in criminal trials. Justice Hugo Black has well expressed the pervasiveness of this tradition:
[W]e have been unable to find a single instance of a criminal trial conducted in camera in any federal, state, or municipal court during the history of this country. Nor have we found any record of even one such secret criminal trial in England since abolition of the Court of Star [345]*345Chamber in 1641, and whether that court ever convicted people secretly is in dispute....
This nation’s accepted practice of guaranteeing a public trial to an accused has its roots in our English common law heritage. The exact date of its origin is obscure, but it likely evolved long before the settlement of our land as an accompaniment of the ancient institution of jury trial.
In re Oliver, 333 U.S. 257, 266, 68 S.Ct. 499, 504, 92 L.Ed. 682 (1948), cited in Richmond Newspapers, supra, 448 U.S. at 573, n. 9, 100 S.Ct. at 2825, n. 9, 65 L.Ed.2d at 987, n. 9.
Pennsylvania, however, has a concern with public trials that goes beyond even the unbroken history of public trials to which Justice Black refers. In Pennsylvania it is specifically and constitutionally mandated that courts shall be open. In other words, the public shall not be excluded from trials, the courts shall not be closed. That members of the media were present during the closure in this case does not satisfy the requirement of openness. While it is true that attendance at a criminal trial is subject to reasonable time, place and manner restrictions, Cf. Richmond Newspapers, supra, at 581, n. 18, 100 S.Ct. at 2829, n. 18, 65 L.Ed.2d at 992, n. 18, the openness mandated by our constitution is not satisfied if only representatives of the media are present in the courtroom. Exclusion of the public would strike at the essence and meaning of our mandate for an open court, for the public counterbalances what might otherwise become a tyranny of the media, and the public and the media together counterbalance the possible emergence of a corrupt or biased judiciary.
In order to understand the especially important place that openness of trials has in Pennsylvania, it is well to remember that William Penn was himself the victim of a trial conducted without regard for due process. In 1670 William Penn and William Mead were tried before a jury at the Old Bailey in London on an indictment of unlawful assembly, disturbing the peace, and “causing a great concourse and tumult.” Penn, The Tryal of William Penn and William Mead for Causing a Tumult (1719, 1919 Boston) 2. Penn had [346]*346addressed a group of three hundred Quakers in Grace Church Street, London, after the Quakers had found their meeting house locked by order of the crown. At the trial which followed, the jury found that Penn spoke in the street, but refused to find him guilty of any criminal offense. The judges directed the jury to find the defendants guilty as charged, but the. jury refused, whereupon the court directed that they be confined without food or amenities until they complied.
The jury, however, refused to comply, and the trial was abruptly ended after the jury had been confined to the jury chamber for two days. The court’s displeasure with the verdict was reflected in its fining of the jurors forty Marks each and imprisoning them until the fines were paid. Although Penn was found not guilty, he too was imprisoned for fines based on contempt of court. The jurors were released, however, after Chief Justice Sir John Vaughan of the Court of Common Pleas issued a writ of habeas corpus. The Chief Justice held that judges may not compel a verdict in a criminal case against the convictions of the jury. See “The Trial of William Penn,” 6 Litigation (Winter 1980), 35, 49.
This trial is likely to have left an impression on Penn. He considered the charges against him to be in violation of the Great Charter of 1225 and the earlier version, the Magna Carta; he was repeatedly removed from the courtroom by force and held in the “bayl dock,” a cage-like structure; and the tone of the trial was one of bullying and even open threat.2
[348]*348It seems not unduly speculative that Penn had this trial in mind when, in 1682, he wrote by his own hand in his Frame Of Government that all courts shall be open. The Frame of Government was a contract between the proprietor, Penn, and the citizens of his colony, expressing his political philosophy and proposed laws for the governance of the colony. Illick, Colonial Pennsylvania: A History 14 (1976). The language employed by Penn has remained unchanged in the respective constitutions of our Commonwealth. It is, of course, unthinkable to us that a contemporary defendant in a criminal case could be treated as was Penn. But our assurance of fairness derives, at least in part, from our knowledge that our courts are open. Closed trials are the mechanics of tyranny.
The public and representatives of the press alike enjoy the constitutional right in Pennsylvania to attend trials. Neither may be excluded because the other is present. Cf. Estes v. Texas, 381 U.S. 532, 540, 85 S.Ct. 1628, 1631, 14 L.Ed.2d 543, 549 (1965), (representatives of the media have the same right as the public to attend criminal trials). This right of the public to attend criminal trials and of the accused to be assured of the freedom of the public to attend these trials and to monitor what goes on there has been abridged in this case. The trial court failed to preserve the appellant’s constitutional right to an impartial public trial. Accordingly, we reverse the judgment of sentence and remand for a new trial.
[349]*349ROBERTS, J., files a concurring opinion in which O’BRIEN, C.J., joins.
NIX, J., files a dissenting opinion in which HUTCHINSON, J., joins.
McDERMOTT, J., files a dissenting opinion.