Commonwealth v. Curley

189 A.3d 467
CourtSuperior Court of Pennsylvania
DecidedJune 4, 2018
DocketNo. 637 MDA 2017
StatusPublished
Cited by7 cases

This text of 189 A.3d 467 (Commonwealth v. Curley) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Superior Court of Pennsylvania primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Commonwealth v. Curley, 189 A.3d 467 (Pa. Ct. App. 2018).

Opinion

OPINION BY RANSOM, J.:

Appellant, the Associated Press, appeals from the order entered March 10, 2017, denying its motion to unseal docket entries and various documents filed in the five underlying criminal cases in this matter. After careful review, we find that the substance of the documents in question has already been disclosed to the public, and that the proffer letters are not public judicial documents and therefore are not subject to the right of disclosure. Thus, we *470reverse the trial court's order in part and affirm in part.

We adopt the following statement of facts and procedural history from the trial court opinion and the underlying record. See Trial Court Opinion (TCO), 8/4/17, at 2-5. In 2011, Gerald A. Sandusky, the former defensive coordinator for the Pennsylvania State University ("PSU") football team and founder of a non-profit charity for troubled youth, was arrested. He was charged with forty-nine offenses related to the sexual abuse of ten child victims. As a result of this arrest, a grand jury investigation was conducted into the actions of various university officials.

As an outcome of that investigation, Appellee Graham Spanier was charged with one count of perjury, two counts of endangering the welfare of children, one count of obstruction of justice, three counts of conspiracy, and one count of failure to report suspected child abuse.1 Appellee Timothy Curley was charged with endangering the welfare of children, obstruction of justice, and criminal conspiracy. Appellee Gary Schultz was charged with endangering the welfare of children, obstruction of justice, and criminal conspiracy. In total, as noted supra , this matter involves five separate criminal dockets. The grand jury presentments were publicly released.

Prior to trial, in November 2013, Appellees filed several motions arguing that attorney-client privilege existed between them and Cynthia Baldwin, a former Justice of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, who was serving as the general counsel of PSU. The motions referenced facts that Appellees asserted were privileged, so they requested that the filings be made under seal. The filings were allowed to be made under seal and were listed on the dockets as "Sealed Entr[ies]."

In June 2014, PA Media Group filed a motion to unseal the records; Appellees filed responses in opposition. In January 2015, the trial court issued a memorandum opinion and order disposing of the motion to unseal, as well as the motions to dismiss the charges that resulted from Ms. Baldwin's testimony before the grand jury.

The court found that in all matters related to Appellees' appearances before the grand jury, Ms. Baldwin had represented each defendant in his capacity as an agent of the University conducting university business, not as an individual in his personal capacity. In so finding, the court determined that Appellees had not been denied their right to counsel and also that Ms. Baldwin had not violated attorney-client privilege. Nevertheless, due to the sensitivity of the privilege issue, the memorandum opinion on the open docket cited only evidence in the open record, and additional sealed memorandums addressed the sealed evidence.

Appellees timely filed an interlocutory appeal under seal. In January 2016, a panel of this Court reversed the orders, finding that the communications regarding subpoenas between Ms. Baldwin and Appellees were protected by attorney-client privilege. See Commonwealth v. Curley , 131 A.3d 994, 1006-07 (Pa. Super. 2016) ; Commonwealth v. Schultz , 133 A.3d 294, 324-28 (Pa. Super. 2016) ; Commonwealth v. Spanier , 132 A.3d 481, 498 (Pa. Super. 2016). Thus, the panel determined that Ms. Baldwin was an incompetent witness to testify regarding the perjury and obstruction charges. Id. Accordingly, the panel quashed all charges that arose from the violation of privilege. Id. In issuing its opinion, the panel unsealed select portions *471of the notes of testimony.2

In May 2016, the Associated Press ("AP") and ALM Media LLC ("ALM") filed a motion to intervene and unseal filings on the five dockets connected to this matter. They represented that the Commonwealth and Appellees Curley and Schultz agreed that consideration of the motion required document by document review and represented that counsel for Appellee Spanier concurred in the motion except as to the transcript of a closed hearing and sealed opinion relating to attorney-client privilege. The court granted the motion to intervene and directed Appellees to file responses to the request. Pending disposition of the motion to unseal, the record was to remain sealed.

In September 2016, the trial court conducted a conference regarding the motion. If the court would not unseal the records fully, Appellant proposed that, in the alternative, the court should unseal the titles of filings listed as sealed entries but keep the contents of the filings sealed. Appellees submitted letters to the court, detailing their respective positions. The Commonwealth did not object to the motion to unseal, except as to grand jury filings that had not been previously unsealed by the supervising judge of the statewide investigating grand jury. The trial court conducted a file-by-file examination of the documents and docket entries at issue.

On March 6, 2017, the court granted the motion in part and denied it in part, unsealing numerous filings at each docket, but denying most of Appellant's motion to unseal the documents. It did not issue individualized findings for any record but instead stated that it found "such filings are not subject to right of public access to judicial proceedings because they relate to proffers to the court and claims of attorney-client privileged information." See Order, 3/10/17, at 5. The order also stated that the court had conducted a document-by-document review of the record and sealed additional documents and docket entries that the parties had not requested sealed based upon the same reason. Id.

Appellant timely appealed.3 Both Appellant and the trial court have complied with Pa.R.A.P. 1925(b).4

On appeal, Appellant raises the following issues for our review:

1.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
189 A.3d 467, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/commonwealth-v-curley-pasuperct-2018.