EDNY COURTHOUSE, August 11 – On the
Eastern District of New York's public courtroom calendar
for July 7 was an entry with no name: "* SEALED *," 2:00
p.m., Courtroom 6H North, before Judge William F. Kuntz,
II. On PACER, the case — 18-cr-277 — returns only "Sealed
v. Sealed. This case is under seal."
No caption, no parties, no docket entries.
A criminal case, apparently opened in 2018, invisible for
eight years. Inner City Press, which covers the federal
courts, wrote to Judge Kuntz that same day: docket the
letter, unseal the docket sheet, and test the continued
sealing against the Second Circuit's standards — citing
Hartford Courant Co. v. Pellegrino, 380 F.3d 83 (2d Cir.
2004), in which the Second Circuit held that the press and
public have a qualified First Amendment right of access to
docket sheets themselves, without which "the public cannot
know what it is being denied." Judge Kuntz did not ignore
the letter. He did not deny it in a sealed order.
He did something better — and, in Inner
City Press's experience across a dozen districts, close to
unique: he opened a new, public miscellaneous case,
captioned In
re Inner City Press [26-cv-4094], docketed Inner
City Press's letter as Document 1, and put Assistant
United States Attorneys on the case to respond. Consider
the elegance of it. The underlying case is sealed; even an
order about it, entered on its docket, would be invisible.
Rather than let the access request
disappear into the same black hole it challenges, Judge
Kuntz created a public vehicle in which the question of
secrecy will itself be litigated publicly, with the
government required to appear and be counted. That is
Pellegrino's principle made procedure: whatever ultimately
remains sealed, the public gets to watch the deciding.
Judge Kuntz, appointed in 2011, on senior status since
2022, presumably could have done what some of his
colleagues around the country have done with Inner City
Press's requests — nothing, or worse. Instead the docket
now shows a case named for the press asking the question.
On July 13 Judge Kuntz set a schedule:
"ORDER: The Court is in receipt of the request from Inner
City Press to unseal the criminal case 18-CR-277. ECF No.
1. The Court DIRECTS Plaintiff and Defendant to submit
their responses to the request on ECF on or before
Tuesday, August 11, 2026, at 5:00 P.M. The Court further
DIRECTS Inner City Press to submit its reply, if any, on
or before Tuesday, August 25, 2026, at 5:00 P.M. The Clerk
of Court is respectfully directed to mail a copy of this
Order and an updated copy of the docket report for the
above-captioned civil action to Mr. Matthew Russell Lee of
Inner City Press. Ordered by Judge William F. Kuntz, II on
7/13/2026."
On August 11, the US Attorney's Office
submitted a response that because there was a proceeding
held in EDNY, with no information about it, that is
enough. The defendant's two lawyers wrote in, merely
joining in the Government's letter. Inner City Press
immediately, mid-afternoon on August 11, replied - by
email to Chambers, as it cannot file by ECF in EDNY:
"Tellingly, the Government's letter does
not state what the 'specific, on-the-record findings' made
on July 7 actually were. It asserts that findings were
made without reciting their substance. A conclusory
assertion that findings exist is not a substitute for
stating what they were. Defense counsel's August 11, 2026
letter joining the government's position adds nothing to
test. It states only that defendant "oppose[s] Inner City
Press' request... [f]or the reasons the government has
articulated," without offering any independent showing of
its own. To whatever extent defendant has a distinct
privacy or fair-trial interest in continued sealing — as
opposed to the government's institutional interest in the
underlying prosecution — that interest has not been
described, let alone supported by the kind of specific,
particularized findings Lugosch requires. A one-paragraph
adoption of another party's argument does not supply the
missing findings; it simply confirms that no party has yet
stated, on this record, what specific harm continued
docket-sheet secrecy is meant to prevent. [Mr. Radick is
listed in the docket as Plaintiff; cc-ed]
"For what it is worth, while Inner City Press which has been granted in-house status in SDNY and therefore is able to have laptop and cell phone inside 500 Pearl Street does sometime go to proceedings about which little information is available in advance, Inner City Press has found it significantly more difficult in EDNY, having had to advocate for weeks for a trial-specific pass in one instance.... This is relevant to the argument that a member of the media, with NYC Press Pass, could simply have hung around and gone to a proceeding about which there was, intentionally, no information. Inner City Press respectfully renews its request that the Court unseal."
Presumably it will be docketed as the
request was, and a ruling will come. Watch this site.
