Neither the Sixth Amendment public trial right nor the public trial right conferred by R.C.M. 806 applies to hearings conducted pursuant to M.R.E. 412(c)(2). We therefore answer the granted issue in the negative and hold that the military judge's closure of the courtroom did not violate Appellant's right to a public trial.

The Court holds that a military judge may close a hearing on the admissibility of evidence under Military Rule of Evidence (M.R.E.) 412 without conducting a case-by-case analysis of whether the closure would violate the accused's Sixth Amendment right to a public trial. This holding, in my view, conflicts with the Supreme Court's decisions in Waller v. Georgia, 467 U.S. 39, 104 S. Ct. 2210, 81 L. Ed. 2d 31 (1984), and Presley v. Georgia, 558 U.S. 209, 130 S. Ct. 721, 175 L. Ed. 2d 675 (2010) (per curiam), and this Court's decision in ABC, Inc. v. Powell, 47 M.J. 363 (C.A.A.F. 1997).

As all five of the CAAF’s judges acknowledged, whether the Sixth Amendment’s Public Trial Clause applies to rape shield hearings is a question that has already divided multiple state supreme courts--including three that have held, contra the CAAF, that the Clause does apply to such proceedings. The CAAF’s decision in this case deepens that split--which is one that only this Court can resolve.
. . .
At least four state supreme courts have directly confronted the question of whether the Public Trial Clause of the Sixth Amendment applies to rape shield hearings. And three of the four have answered that question in the affirmative.

The military judge granted Appellee’s motion to suppress “searches and seizures of [his] person, deployed residence, electronic devices, email transmissions and any fruits of such searches.” The Government moved for reconsideration arguing that the military judge incorrectly concluded that the independent source doctrine was inapplicable to this case and that he incorrectly applied the exclusionary rule to the evidence in question. The military judge denied the reconsideration motion. The Government appealed the ruling of the military judge with regards to the application of the independent source and the exclusionary rule.

We need not address the military judge’s application of the exclusionary rule because we find that the military judge held an erroneous view of the law in his application of the independent source doctrine to the facts of this case. Hence, his suppression of the evidence was an abuse of discretion.