This relates to the gag order issued in the Manafort case, and any such similar gag orders.
I don’t get the rationale for this type of gag order. I had thought of gag orders as being about people closely connected with the case releasing information which was not otherwise publically known. In this case, the judge is saying that Manafort and his attorneys can’t say anything about the case at all, even to assert their innocence. This seems hard to justify.
For one thing, the rationale is that the judge doesn’t want the jury influenced by comments outside of the courtroom. But the amount of outside commentary is enormous outside of anything Manafort’s attorneys might say, and it’s like the judge can or has tried to stop all commentary outside of court. Anything that Manafort might add to that is minuscule by comparison.
Beyond that, I’m curious as to what authority a judge has to issue an order so broad as to tell a person that he can’t publically say that he’s innocent.
So the questions are:
[ul]
[li]Is this in fact accepted as being part of a judge’s authority?[/li][li]What’s the basis and rationale for it, in light of the above?[/li][/ul]
Yes, it’s accepted as being part of the judge’s authority. Anything a high profile defendant says is going to get into the press, and potentially taint the jury pool. Imagine he says “Not only am I innocent, this is a politically motivated prosecution and every member of the prosecution team is on the Clinton payroll.” (or any other theory of his defense). Then, at trial, he invokes his right and declines to testify. The Government never gets a chance to cross examine him, and it’s likely the jury remembers his denial.
The authority is frequently explicitly made part of the local court rules, as the federal judge in this case pointed out in her order. Of note, neither Manafort nor the government attorneys objected to the order here.
These types of orders are not unusual in high-profile cases, given the high likelihood that potential jurors would be exposed to public statements from the parties. For example, the judge overseeing the Michael Jackson child molestation case in California state court similarly issued a gag order prohibiting Jackson, the accuser, and counsel from speaking to the media (except through statements subject to approval by the judge).