Should all federal plea agreements be generally available on-line?
I just saw this fascinating article from The National Law Journal, headlined “Federal judge defies DOJ wishes, orders all plea agreements to be posted online.” Here is how it starts:
Chief Judge Federico Moreno of the Southern District of Florida, bucking the wishes of the U.S. Department of Justice, has ordered all plea agreements to be posted online.
In an order issued on Jan. 22, Moreno stated that as of Feb. 20, all plea agreements “will be public documents, with full remote access available to all members of the public and the bar, unless the Court has entered an order in advance directing the sealing or otherwise restricting a plea agreement.” Moreno’s order rescinds a previous order of April 2007 taking all plea agreements offline and making them accessible for physical viewing only at the courthouse.
The issue of whether plea agreements should be publicly available, able to be viewed electronically through the PACER system, is a controversial one, pitting prosecutors against defense lawyers and First Amendment advocates. In 2007, the Justice Department asked the Judicial Conference to restrict electronic access to plea and cooperation agreements in order to keep information about cooperating witnesses secret.
This is a dynamic and important issue that implicates a lot more interests and concerns than even DOJ and defense attorney often acknowledge. A recent student note (discussed here) spoke to some of these issues, and also generated some terrific comments. Perhaps readers will use the comments to this post to continue an on-line dialogue about on-line plea agreements.
Some related posts with related questions: