ABSTRACT
The Sixth Amendment to the Constitution requires that criminal defendants be tried in proceedings that are open to the public, and while qualities such as “fairness” and “impartiality” are not specified in the amendment, those factors are nevertheless mentioned in any discussion involving the rights of the accused. But the quest for an impartial jury became substantially more difficult in the latter half of the twentieth century, due to the growth of the mass media into a twenty-fourhour industry and the public’s increasing interest for news about criminal trials involving celebrities from the fields of sports and entertainment.
