Criminal Justice Secrets

• Author: Meghan J. Ryan
• Position: Associate Dean for Research, Altshuler Distinguished Teaching Professor, and Professor of Law, SMU Dedman School of Law
• Pages: 1541-1596

CRIMINAL JUSTICE SECRETS

Meghan J. Ryan*

ABSTRACT

The American criminal justice system is cloaked in secrecy. The government

employs covert surveillance operations. Grand-jury proceedings are hidden from

public view. Prosecutors engage in closed-door plea-bargaining and bury exculpa-

tory evidence. Juries convict defendants on secret evidence. Jury deliberations are a

black box. And jails and prisons implement clandestine punishment practices.

Although there are some justifications for this secrecy, the ubiquitous nature of it is

contrary to this nation’s Founders’ steadfast belief in the transparency of criminal

justice proceedings. Further, the pervasiveness of secrecy within today’s criminal

justice system raises serious constitutional concerns. The accumulation of secrecy

and the aggregation of these concerns create a real constitutional problem.

INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1542

I. CRIMINAL JUSTICE SECRECY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1547

A. Investigation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1547

B. Grand Juries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1551

C. Plea-Bargaining . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1555

D. “Discovery”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1557

E. Conviction Evidence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1560

F. Jury Deliberations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1561

G. Punishment. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1562

II. JUSTIFICATIONS FOR SECRECY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1566

A. The Government’s Prosecutorial Interests . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1566

B. Additional Justifications for Secrecy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1570

III. CONTRAVENING OUR TRANSPARENCY ROOTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1573

IV. CONCRETE CONSTITUTIONAL CONCERNS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1583

A. Investigation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1583

B. Grand Juries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1584

C. Plea-Bargaining . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1585

D. “Discovery”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1588

E. Conviction Evidence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1589

* Associate Dean for Research, Altshuler Distinguished Teaching Professor, and Professor of Law, SMU

Dedman School of Law. I am grateful to questions and comments I received on this project from Jennifer Collins,

Jenia Turner, Ryan Scott, Joe Hoffman, Michael Ausbrook, Sam Levine, and Will Berry. I also thank SMU and

the Lidji Endowment Fund for financial support and Michael Vuong for his excellent research assistance.

Finally, I appreciate the diligent editorial assistance provided by Lauren Lang, Sephora Grey, and the American

Criminal Law Review. © 2022, Meghan J. Ryan.

1541

F. Jury Deliberations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1590

G. Punishment. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1591

CONCLUSION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1596

INTRODUCTION

Our criminal justice system is cloaked in immense secrecy. From beginning to

end, covert operators and legal rules hide the inner workings of the system.

Undercover police officers and confidential informants work surreptitiously to arm

the government with secret information.

1

Covert technologies such as Stingray cell

phone trackers

2

further provide the government with information it can use to

uncover criminal activity and convict criminal offenders.

3

Prosecutors attack crim-

inal suspects in secret grand jury proceedings without allowing these prospective

defendants the opportunity to defend themselves.

4

Prosecutors engage in plea-bar-

gaining behind closed doors, preventing defendants the opportunity to fairly com-

pare the prosecutors’ plea offers with those offered to similarly situated

defendants. Even “discovery” proceedings are full of secrecy. Under the Supreme

Court’s due process jurisprudence, prosecutors are required to disclose only mini-

mal evidence to criminal defendants, and violations of even this basic demand are

rampant.

5

That means that evidence exculpating defendants is often hidden from

1. See infra Part I.A.

2. As described by the ACLU:

Stingrays, also known as “cell site simulators” or “IMSI catchers,” are invasive cell phone surveil-

lance devices that mimic cell phone towers and send out signals to trick cell phones in the area

into transmitting their locations and identifying information. When used to track a suspect’s cell

phone, they also gather information about the phones of countless bystanders who happen to be

nearby.

Stingray Tracking Devices: Who’s Got Them?, ACLU, https://www.aclu.org/issues/privacy-technology/

surveillance-technologies/stingray-tracking-devices-whos-got-them (last visited Feb. 23, 2022).

3. See Susan Freiwald & Stephen Wm. Smith, The Carpenter Chronicle: A Near-Perfect Surveillance, 132

HARV. L. REV. 205, 205–06 (2018) (“For well over a quarter century, law enforcement has surreptitiously

converted the personal cell phone into a tracking device, capable of compiling a comprehensive chronicle of the

user’s movements over an extended period of time.”); Elizabeth E. Joh, The New Surveillance Discretion:

Automated Suspicion, Big Data, and Policing, 10 HARV. L. & POL’Y REV. 15, 15–16 (2016) (“New technologies

have altered surveillance discretion by lowering its costs and increasing the capabilities of the police to identify

suspicious persons.”); Rachel Levinson-Waldman, Hiding in Plain Sight: A Fourth Amendment Framework for

Analyzing Government Surveillance in Public, 66 EMORY L.J. 527, 537 (2017) (“[A]s of late 2014, nearly fty

state and local police departments in the United States were known to be using a device popularly called a

Stingray to directly intercept all cell phone signals in a given area.”).

4. See Carrie Leonetti, When the Emperor Has No Clothes: A Proposal for Defensive Summary Judgment in

Criminal Cases, 84 S. CAL. L. REV. 661, 678–79 (2011); see also, e.g., FED. R. CRIM. P. 6(d)(1) (providing that

only “[t]he following persons may be present while the grand jury is in session: attorneys for the government, the

witness being questioned, interpreters when needed, and a court reporter or an operator of a recording device”).

5. See Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83, 87 (1963) (“We now hold that the suppression by the prosecution of

evidence favorable to an accused upon request violates due process where the evidence is material either to guilt

or to punishment, irrespective of the good faith or bad faith of the prosecution.”); United States v. Olsen, 737

F.3d 625, 626 (9th Cir. 2013) (Kozinski, C.J., dissenting) (“There is an epidemic of Brady violations abroad in

the land. Only judges can put a stop to it.”).

1542 AMERICAN CRIMINAL LAW REVIEW [Vol. 59:1541

defendants, judges, juries, and the public more broadly. Beyond hiding exculpatory

evidence, prosecutors are also using secret evidence to convict criminal defend-

ants.

6

Breathalyzer and some DNA evidence, for example, are based upon source

codes and algorithms to which defendants are generally denied access because

they are categorized as trade secrets.

7

This means that defendants lack the opportu-

nity to truly challenge this evidence in court. Further, secrecy obscures jury delib-

erations on the evidence. These deliberations happen behind closed doors and,

even if there is evidence of juror misconduct infecting the discussions, this infor-

mation ordinarily cannot be used to legally undercut the verdict that was reached.

Instead, jury deliberations ordinarily remain a black box. Extensive secrecy even

shrouds criminal punishment. The government fails to disclose some aspects of

incarceration, such as jail operating procedures and lethal injection protocols,

claiming that those details constitute trade secrets.

8

It even hides the particulars of

the ultimate punishment, masking the identities of executioners and lethal injection

drugs, as well as death row inmates’ physical reactions to the drugs.

9

There are some justifications for this extensive secrecy. Most of them relate to

the government’s prosecutorial interests. For example, more surveillance evidence

of criminal wrongdoing assists the government in uncovering and punishing this

behavior.

10

Secrecy also helps prosecutors by easing the burdens associated with

disclosing information such as the details of plea bargains or immaterial exculpa-

tory evidence.

11

But secrecy also serves prosecutors’ interests in securing convic-

tions, regardless of whether those convictions further the broader goal of achieving

justice.

12

For example, a prosecutor’s refusal to disclose certain exculpatory evi-

dence places the defendant at an informational disadvantage about the strength of

the prosecutor’s case, making it easier for the prosecutor to secure a plea agree-

ment. By withholding this evidence, prosecutors may also give a skewed picture to

the judge and jury about the strength of the government’s case and thus have a

greater likelihood of prevailing at trial. Finally, commentators sometimes justify

government secrecy in certain segments of the criminal justice system as a practice

that protects witnesses and other third parties.

13

One example of such third-party

6. See Meghan J. Ryan, Secret Conviction Programs, 77 WASH. & LEE L. REV. 269, 270 (2020) (“Across the

country, judges and juries are convicting defendants based on secret evidence.”).

7. See id. at 304–05, 319; see also Meghan J. Ryan, Secret Algorithms, IP Rights, and the Public Interest, 61

NEV. L.J. 61, 64 (2020).

8. See Samantha Michaels, Want to Know How Your Local Jail Operates? Sorry, That May Be a Trade Secret,

MOTHER JONES (Mar./Apr. 2019), https://www.motherjones.com/crime-justice/2019/03/want-to-know-how-

your-local-jail-operates-sorry-that-may-be-a-trade-secret/ (explaining the denial of information concerning the

jail’s operational standards); William W. Berry III & Meghan J. Ryan, Cruel Techniques, Unusual Secrets, 78

OHIO ST. L.J. 403, 423–24 (2017) (discussing the details of lethal injections that are kept secret).

9. See Berry & Ryan, supra note 8, at 423.

10. See infra Part II.

11. See Jenia I. Turner, Transparency in Plea Bargaining, 96 NOTRE DAME L. REV. 973, 995–97 (2021); see

also infra Part II.

12. See infra Part II.

13. See id.

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