Criminal Law
A Newspaper Challenges an Oklahoma Judge’s Decision to Keep a Murder Trial Private
An Oklahoma newspaper on Tuesday challenged a judge’s decision to ban the public from a hearing in the case of a Muskogee man accused of killing six people, including five children.
An attorney for the Muskogee Phoenix filed a motion to intervene in the case after District Judge Bret Smith barred a reporter for the newspaper and two other members of the media from attending a preliminary hearing in the case on Monday.
Telephone calls to the judge’s office on Tuesday rang unanswered, but the judge told a reporter for the Tulsa World that he closed the hearing because of a deprived-child matter he was hearing simultaneously in the case involving surviving children and their mother.
