UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SECOND CIRCUIT August Term, 2021 (Argued: September 28, 2021 Decided: May 5, 2022) Docket No. 20-3317-cv

GIGI JORDAN, Petitioner-Appellee,

v.

AMY LAMANNA, in her official capacity as Superintendent of the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility, Respondent-Appellant.

Before: LEVAL, SACK, and PARK, Circuit Judges.

The respondent-appellant Amy Lamanna, in her official capacity as Superintendent of the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility, appeals from an order granting a writ of habeas corpus to the petitioner-appellee Gigi Jordan. Jordan was convicted of manslaughter in New York State Supreme Court for administering a fatal dose of prescription medication to her eight-year-old son. In the midst of the highly publicized trial, the courtroom was closed to all spectators for approximately fifteen minutes, during which the prosecutor addressed a website and an email detailing complaints by Jordan that her trial was unfair. Jordan moved to set aside her conviction on the ground that her Sixth Amendment right to a public trial had been violated. The New York Appellate Division rejected her claim; the New York Court of Appeals declined to hear an appeal from that decision, and the United States Supreme Court denied her petition for a writ of certiorari. The United States District Court for the Southern District of New York (Sarah L. Cave, M.J.), on a petition for a writ of habeas corpus, concluded that the Appellate Division had unreasonably applied clearly established federal law in holding that there was no Sixth Amendment violation. The district court granted Jordan's petition and ordered a 20-3317-cv Jordan v. Lamanna new trial. We conclude that the ruling of the New York Appellate Division was not "contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established Federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States." 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1). We therefore

REVERSE the judgment of the district court, and REMAND with instructions for the court to deny the petition for a writ of habeas corpus.

MICHAEL B. KIMBERLY, McDermott Will & Emery LLP, Washington, DC (Norman H. Siegel, Siegel Teitelbaum & Evans, LLP, New York, NY; Earl S. Ward, Emery Celli Brinckerhoff Abady Ward & Maazel LLP, New York, NY, on the brief), for Petitioner- Appellee;

VINCENT RIVELLESE (Christopher P. Marinelli, on the brief), for Cyrus R. Vance, District Attorney of New York County, New York, NY, for Respondent-Appellant. SACK, Circuit Judge:

Petitioner-appellee Gigi Jordan was tried and convicted in New York State Supreme Court for administering a fatal dose of prescription medication to her eight-year-old son. After several weeks of what became a nine-week trial, the presiding justice closed the courtroom to all spectators, at the State's request, for approximately fifteen minutes. During the closure, the State brought to the court's attention a website titled "The Inadmissible Truth," which alleged that the court had wrongly excluded evidence from the trial, and an email from Jordan

2 20-3317-cv Jordan v. Lamanna disseminating the website to over one hundred contacts. The State asked the court to repeat its instru