ANTHONY S. PITCH, PLAINTIFF-APPELLEE,
v.
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, DEFENDANT-APPELLANT.
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Author Anthony Pitch successfully petitioned to unseal grand jury transcripts from the 1946 Moore's Ford Lynching investigation in Georgia, and the Eleventh Circuit affirmed the district court's decision, holding that district courts possess inherent authority to disclose grand jury materials outside the enumerated exceptions in Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 6(e) when exceptional circumstances exist. The court found that seventy-one years after the proceedings, the historical significance of the lynching and the absence of living witnesses or ongoing prosecutions outweighed the government's interest in continued grand jury secrecy.
[1] A district court may invoke its inherent authority to disclose grand jury records only when an enumerated Rule 6(e) exception does not directly govern the requested discl…
[2] Exceptional circumstances exist for the disclosure of grand jury records when the need for disclosure outweighs the public interest in continued secrecy.
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A member of this Court in active service having requested a poll on whether this *1225case should be reheard en banc and a majority of the judges of this Court in active service having voted in favor of granting rehearing en banc, IT IS ORDERED that this case will be reheard en banc. The panel's opinion is VACATED.
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Pitch v. United States, 953 F.3d 1226 (11th Cir. 2020)…stances" that justified the Court's use of its inherent power to order disclosure. In re Pitch, 275 F. Supp. 3d 1373, 1383 (M.D. Ga. 2017), aff'd sub nom. Pitch v. United States, 915 F.3d 704 (11th Cir. 2019), reh'g en banc granted, opinion vacated, 925 F.3d 1224 (11th Cir. 2019). A panel of this Court, "bound by our decision in Hastings," affirmed the District Court's exercise of its inherent, supervisory power to authorize disclosure of grand jury records outside the confines of Rule 6(e) for matters of h…1 / 2
Authorities Cited (26 total)
- United States v. Socony-Vacuum Oil Co., Inc., 310 U.S. 150 (U.S. 1940)
- Thomas v. Arn, 474 U.S. 140 (U.S. 1985)
- United States v. Procter & Gamble Co., 356 U.S. 677 (U.S. 1958)
- Douglas Oil Co. of Cal. v. Petrol Stops Northwest, 441 U.S. 211 (U.S. 1979)
- Globe Newspaper Co. v. Superior Court for the Cnty. of Norfolk, 457 U.S. 596 (U.S. 1982)
- Chambers v. Nasco, Inc., 501 U.S. 32 (U.S. 1991)
- Pittsburgh Plate Glass Co. v. United States, 360 U.S. 395 (U.S. 1959)
- Bank of Nova Scotia v. United States, 487 U.S. 250 (U.S. 1988)
- United States v. Sells Eng'g, Inc., 463 U.S. 418 (U.S. 1983)
- Johnson v. United States, 520 U.S. 461 (U.S. 1997)