In my limited experience and understanding, I would think any information pertaining to the case that is possible evidence would be presented to the court in order to determine the most appropriate verdict. So why seal documents if they could heavily impact the verdict? Isn’t that like saying “Hey, the defendants gun was recovered, but we’re going to set that fact aside, and you can’t use that against him.”
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Usually the stuff that’s sealed is personal information of the victim. It is presented to the court but not made part of the public record.
ie. victim doesn’t need their medical records public.
What you’re thinking of is excluding evidence. This usually happens because it has been improperly obtained or tainted in some way. The defendant’s gun may not be allowed as evidence if the police violated the defendant’s fourth amendment rights while obtaining it.
A seal is preventing the public from seeing information that the parties to the trial have access to. For example, a juvenile defendant’s name may be sealed to protect them, but everyone in the courtroom will know who they are.
Sometimes information is sealed because it involves a minor. Sometimes it’s information that will be used as part of a large case where more people will be charged at a later time. Judges know what information is being sealed and it needs their approval.
*Isn’t that like saying “Hey, the defendants gun was recovered, but we’re going to set that fact aside, and you can’t use that against him.”* No, that’s not how it works. Nothing is ‘set aside’ within the proceedings, it just may not be made common knowledge.
In my experience, documents that are sealed to the **public** does not mean they are not considered by the court.
These can be medical records, or confidential business records, or victim statements, or a whole host of other significant information. The parties file motions with the court to argue whether some docs should be kept private (within the action), and the court decides what docs (if any of them) are kept confidential.
Just because they are not part of the public record does not mean they are not part of the action.
Sealed record ARE often used in trial. They just won’t be released to the public. Judges often will unseal records at the end of a trial, some may be unsealed after a set amount of time goes by. Sometimes they are never unsealed.
If the prosecution intends to use the sealed evidence at trial, the defense will have access to those documents, but the public won’t.
Records can be sealed because of the age of the participants (if kids are involved), if they are afraid of biasing a jury that has yet to be picked, if State secrets are involved, or if it could damage on-going investigations.
Isn’t it also so potential jurors are not tainted prior to the trial?
It could be that it would prejudice the jury and the judge etc feel that it is not relevant to the case.
I have served on a jury – uk – were this happened: evidence of a minor crime was found during the investigation into a different crime; you are asked to pass verdict on the major crime without being influenced by the minor .
Think “did this person steal a car or did their friend loan them a stolen car?” vs “On searching them we found a[ small amount of cannabis in their pocket (UK)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannabis_in_the_United_Kingdom#Legal_status)” – The case is about the car, the judge doesn’t want you to think “oh, they use drugs so they are bad people so they are of course lying about their friend loaning them this car & not knowing it was stolen”.
Or “she put herself through college by working in a strip club, so 10 years later she isn’t a fit mom so should not get custody of her kids”
Things are sealed because court records are public, not police reports but all court filings are UNLESS they are sealed. They can be sealed for any number of reasons, information about a victim that is unnecessarily embarrassing/revealing, a confidential information/undercover is still ‘operating’ in the same capacity and saying ‘hey someone in the gang is a rat’ is likely to put them in danger, they aren’t ‘sealed’ from the jury they are sealed from the public
Sealing documents is a completely separate issue from whether or not the jury sees them, you’re misunderstanding what is means for records to be sealed.
the court is who decides all of this in the first place. So, the court DID see it.
sealing a document generally just means it is not public information and therefore will not be available to the public pertaining to a case. sometimes a trial involves information that is proprietary, a matter of national security, personally damning information about a victim, etc. The public doesn’t need to know or shouldn’t know those things, so they seal it.
You’re confusing that with exclusion of evidence. All evidence is submitted to the court. Whether the jury hears about it is up to the judge.
Generally, the prosecutor has to give over all of the details of an investigation to the defense as soon as they know it (or at least a reasonable amount of time prior to a trial.) If the defense has an issue with any of the evidence, they would ask the court to throw it out. The judge decides if that happens or not.
If they recovered the defendants gun, but the judge decided that it can’t be presented to the jury…….it’s most likely because it was gained illegally or there was an issue with the chain of custody.
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