Jury queries

After somehow being acquitted in the killing of his wife and another man during the trial of the decade in the 1990s, former football great O.J. Simpson lived a relatively quiet life.

Until, that is, he showed up in Las Vegas in 2006 and was involved in a scheme to get back some of his very own sports memorabilia from a couple of dealers.

Simpson was arrested when the plan went awry and a gun was drawn during a confrontation at a Palace Station hotel room. He was eventually convicted of kidnapping and armed robbery and sentenced to 33 years in prison.

He now sits in a cell at Indian Springs.

To avoid the type of circus that overwhelmed Simpson's murder trial, District Court Judge Jackie Glass took a number of precautions, one of which was to screen potential jurors with a questionnaire. The questionnaire included scores of queries -- many of which seemed to have little to do with the trial itself.

The Review-Journal asked to see the questionnaire and the responses. The judge provided the questions, but not the answers from potential jurors. After the trial, she offered up the responses from jurors, but with many portions redacted.

On Thursday, the Nevada Supreme Court ruled unanimously that Judge Glass erred, that -- barring a finding of some extraordinary circumstances -- the press and public should have access to the entire process.

"Public access inherently promotes public scrutiny of the judicial process," the court noted. "which enhances both the fairness of criminal proceedings and the public confidence in the criminal justice system."

The questionnaire should have been treated as just another facet of the regular jury selection process that takes place in open court, the justices held. "The use of juror questionnaires does not implicate a separate and distinct proceeding," the court found. "Rather, use of the questionnaires is merely a part of the overall voir dire process, subject to public access and the same qualified limitations as applied to oral voir dire."

There are limited circumstances, the court noted, in which some information may be withheld. But Judge Glass made no such finding before defaulting to secrecy.

The state high court ruling recognizes the importance of allowing the public access to judicial proceedings. While the trial is long since over, the decision sets a strong future precedent.