v. Jones

Summary

The court held that excluding Jones’s parents during the testimony of his children was an unjustified partial courtroom closure violating his Sixth Amendment right to a public trial. Because the violation was structural and could not be cured through remand for additional findings, Jones was entitled to a new trial. The court also held that the child abuse statute’s reference to a “person” does not include a fetus injured in utero and later born alive, and applied the rule of lenity to bar retrial on that charge.