United States v. Rosen

Rosen and Lawrence Franklin (defendants) were charged with conspiring to communicate national defense information to unauthorized recipients. Before trial, under the Classified Information Procedures Act (CIPA), the defendants proposed using classified documents in their defense and objected to the government's proposed substitutions; the government moved under CIPA § 6 to use an expanded silent-witness procedure, where unredacted classified documents would go to the court, counsel, and jury but not be read aloud, with the public seeing only redacted versions and pre-agreed codes used for anything discussed orally. The defendants challenged this procedure as unauthorized by CIPA and unconstitutional under their Sixth Amendment public-trial right and First Amendment right to a trial open to scrutiny.