Just exactly three years ago, Mr. Russell Lee’s InnerCityPress won an unsealing in the SBF felony prosecution — citing free press law here in the US. He’s been on a win streak ever since. Today, he reports that he has prevailed upon a USDC Judge to create a new “catch-all” docket file, just to disclose the requests — and results — in otherwise sealed cases.

This is excellent, as researchers (like your correspondent) will not have to bounce around searching every USDC Judge in Manhattan’s dockets, individually. Now, 26-cv-4094 will contain all unsealing requests. Excellent!

Here’s all of that, from Mr. Matthew Russell Lee at InnerCityPress:

…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.

Inner City Press will report on the government’s response and the Court’s ruling….

As many here know — from time to time, we too fight in dusty West Texas, and Nashville, and New Jersey and Southern Illinois and Miami federal courts, to unseal dockets/filings. This one case number won’t capture those — it is specific to Manhattan. But still, a very good start. Thanks, man.

नमस्ते