Phelps v. Sovran Bank

How later courts describe this case

• finding that a defendant’s Sixth Amendment right to a public trial had been violated when the defendant's family members and possibly some press had been excluded from the courtroom while permitting in the courtroom prospective jurors, witnesses, and courtroom personnel
• “[A] trial judge is ordinarily in a uniquely superior position to gauge the potential for prejudice in a particular case, and therefore to determine whether a mistrial is appropriate or required.”
• except in its offensive nonmutual incarnation, collateral estoppel is not a discretionary doctrine “in the sense that the tribunal asked to apply it has a free-swinging, uncanalized discretion to apply it or not”