Unabom Trial Media Coalition v. U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California

The Unabom Trial Media Coalition ("Media"), a group of newspapers and broadcasting companies, petitions for a writ of mandamus challenging the district court's closure of various aspects of the pretrial proceedings in the case of Theodore John Kaczynski, the infamous "Una-bomber." We dismiss the petition as moot.

I

Kaczynski's trial promised to be one of the most publicized and controversial of recent years. Media accordingly wished to have full access to all pretrial matters and proceedings, but the district court withheld certain information until after Kaczynski's guilty plea on January 22, 1998. Media now raises a laundry list of challenges to the court's pretrial orders and rulings, the highlights of which are as follows: The district court ordered that release of the jurors' and their spouses' names, addresses, and places of employment, be withheld until after discharge, and prohibited any photographs, pictures or sketches of the jurors while within the environs of the courthouse. The court also provisionally sealed portions of the government's Fed.R.Evid. 404(b) motion until it was determined whether the highly inflammatory material described therein was admissible.…