Trivial Five‑Minute Courtroom Closures to Memorialize an Unrecorded Sidebar Do Not Implicate the Sixth Amendment Public‑Trial Right; Post‑Event Performance Plans Are Properly Excluded as Remote Impeachment

Case: United States v. Michael Yumang (7th Cir. Jan. 9, 2026)  |  Court: U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit

1. Introduction

In United States v. Michael Yumang, the Seventh Circuit affirmed methamphetamine-trafficking and firearm convictions following a two-day bench trial in the Eastern District of Wisconsin. The government’s evidence included (i) methamphetamine and a loaded handgun found in 2019 searches of Yumang’s car and home, (ii) an intercepted 2022 postal shipment containing methamphetamine, (iii) methamphetamine found in a 2022 home search, and (iv) recorded statements in which Yumang admitted repeatedly sourcing methamphetamine from California and reselling it in Wisconsin.

On appeal, Yumang tied two asserted trial errors to one DEA forensic chemist who tested the 2019 drugs: (1) the judge briefly closed the courtroom for five minutes to place on the record an earlier unrecorded sidebar about a protective-order matter; and (2) the judge barred cross-examination about the chemist’s later (June 2023) “performance improvement plan,” disclosed under Brady/Giglio.

The key legal questions were:

• Whether a brief closure to memorialize a sidebar violates the Sixth Amendment public-trial right, particularly where the defendant did not object (and arguably induced the closure).
• Whether excluding cross-examination about a chemist’s later workplace performance plan violates ordinary evidentiary rules or the Sixth Amendment Confrontation Clause.

2. Summary of the Opinion

The Seventh Circuit (Sykes, J.) held:

• No Sixth Amendment public-trial violation. The five-minute closure was “too trivial” to implicate the Sixth Amendment at all. Because Yumang failed to object, the claim was reviewed (at most) for plain error, and there was no “clear or obvious” constitutional error.
• No evidentiary or Confrontation Clause violation. The district judge reasonably deemed the 2023 performance improvement plan irrelevant to the chemist’s 2019 analysis. Limits on cross-examination of marginally relevant matters fall within the trial court’s broad discretion and do not necessarily offend the Confrontation Clause.
• Harmlessness / lack of prejudice. Even assuming error, the evidence of guilt was overwhelming—especially Yumang’s admissions that he possessed and distributed methamphetamine—making any potential error harmless.

3. Analysis

3.1 Precedents Cited (and How They Shaped the Decision)

A. Disclosure obligations and the protective-order backdrop

• Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83 (1 963) and Giglio v. United States, 405 U.S. 1 50 (1972): These cases supplied the framework for the government’s disclosure of potential impeachment material about the chemist (the performance improvement plan) and explain why the information was produced under a confidentiality regime (protective order). The Seventh Circuit’s merits analysis did not turn on suppression; rather, these cases contextualized why the issue arose and why the courtroom was temporarily closed to avoid public disclosure of sensitive personnel material.

B. The public-trial right and “trivial closure” doctrine

• In re Oliver, 333 U.S. 257, 270 (1948): Cited for the foundational rationale of the public-trial right—curbing abuses of judicial power via public oversight. The panel used this rationale to ask whether the five-minute closure meaningfully threatened those values.
• Waller v. Georgia, 467 U.S. 39, 46 (1984) and Gannett Co. v. DePasquale, 443 U.S. 368, 380 (1979): Used to describe what public access is meant to protect (spectator presence, juror responsibility, encouraging witnesses, discouraging perjury). These “values” later become the metric for assessing triviality.
• Weaver v. Massachusetts, 582 U.S. 286, 298-99 (2017): Reinforced that the public-trial right protects not only defendants but also the public’s confidence in fairness—again feeding into the “values affected” inquiry.
• Braun v. Powell, 227 F.3d 908, 918-19 (7th Cir. 2000): The Seventh Circuit’s anchor for the proposition that a closure can be so de minimis that it is not a Sixth Amendment violation at all. The court directly applied Braun’s “values” test—whether fairness, seriousness of roles, and public oversight were substantially implicated.
• United States v. Anderson, 881 F.3d 568, 572-76 (7th Cir. 2018): The panel’s most important comparator. Anderson applied plain-error review to an unpreserved public-trial claim and held that a much longer after-hours exclusion caused by locked courthouse doors was still “trivial.” The Yumang panel used Anderson both for the applicable standard of review and as a benchmark: if six hours and substantive trial events were “trivial” there, then five minutes to place a sidebar recap on the record was certainly trivial here.

C. Procedural posture: forfeiture, plain error, and invited error

• United States v. Grisanti, 943 F.3d 1044, 1052 (7th Cir. 2019): Cited for the “invited error” rule (a party cannot induce error and then seek reversal). The court noted the government’s argument that Yumang invited the closure, but elected not to decide the point because the claim failed even under the more forgiving forfeiture/plain-error framework.

D. Sidebars and public-trial limits

• Rovinsky v. McKaskle, 722 F.2d 197, 201 (5th Cir. 1984), United States v. Gallman, 57 F.4th 122, 126 (3d. Cir. 2023), and Richmond Newspapers, Inc. v. Virginia, 448 U.S. 555, 598 n.23 (1980) (Brennan, J., concurring in the judgment): These authorities were marshaled to support the intuition that sidebars are not generally within the core of the public-trial guarantee. The Seventh Circuit used them to underscore the practical point: if the sidebar itself is not a public-trial violation, closing the courtroom briefly to recreate a record of that sidebar is even less likely to implicate the Sixth Amendment.
• Smith v. Titus, 141 S. Ct. 982, 982 (2021) (Sotomayor, J., dissenting from denial of certiorari): Used as a contrast—there, the concern was clearing the courtroom before issuing a “key evidentiary ruling.” The Yumang panel distinguished its facts: the ruling had already been made at sidebar; the closure only captured a recap.

E. Confrontation Clause and limits on cross-examination

• United States v. Gibson, 996 F.3d 451, 466 (7th Cir. 2021): Provided the general statement that confrontation includes effective cross-examination, while leaving room for trial management.
• Delaware v. Fensterer, 474 U.S. 15, 20 (1985): Quoted for the limiting principle that the Clause does not guarantee cross-examination “in whatever way, and to whatever extent” the defense desires.
• Delaware v. Van Arsdall, 475 U.S. 673, 679 (1986): Reinforced the trial judge’s “wide latitude” to impose reasonable limits, including excluding marginally relevant inquiries—directly supporting the exclusion of a remote personnel plan as impeachment.
• United States v. Hart, 995 F.3d 584, 589-90 (7th Cir. 2021): Used to emphasize that excluding irrelevant or marginal impeachment generally does not violate confrontation rights and sits within trial-court discretion.
• United States v. Jenkins, 128 F.4th 885, 891 (7th Cir. 2025): Cited for harmless-error review of Confrontation Clause violations, supporting the court’s alternative holding that any assumed error would be harmless given the evidence (including admissions).

F. Relevance, Rule 403 balancing, and appellate deference

• United States v. Hamzeh, 986 F.3d 1048, 1055 (7th Cir. 2021): Acknowledged the low relevance threshold (Rule 401) and that evidence may be relevant even if directed to an undisputed fact. The panel used this to frame (but not accept) Yumang’s argument.
• United States v. Lewisbey, 843 F.3d 653, 657 (7th Cir. 2016), United States v. Boros, 668 F.3d 901, 907 (7th Cir. 2012), and United States v. Trudeau, 812 F.3d 578, 590 (7th Cir. 2016): These cases cemented the highly deferential “abuse of discretion” standard for evidentiary rulings and the principle that reversal requires that “no reasonable person” could agree with the trial judge. That deference was decisive: the Seventh Circuit accepted the district judge’s judgment that the 2023 plan was too remote to meaningfully bear on 2019 lab work.

3.2 Legal Reasoning

A. Public trial: why the five-minute closure was “trivial”

The panel’s approach was functional rather than formalistic. Instead of asking whether any closure triggers strict scrutiny, it asked whether this closure meaningfully undermined the constitutional values articulated in In re Oliver and Waller, as operationalized by Braun and Anderson.

• Duration and scope were minimal. The closure lasted five minutes and covered a narrow topic: the parties’ on-the-record reconstruction of an unrecorded sidebar.
• No substantive adjudication occurred during closure. The judge did not issue a “key evidentiary ruling” while closed; he reiterated a ruling already made at sidebar.
• Bench trial context reduced the constitutional concern. The classic public-trial values include effects on jurors; here there was no jury. That did not eliminate the public interest, but it diminished one of the primary mechanisms by which openness affects trial integrity.
• Plain-error posture mattered. Because Yumang did not object, he needed to show a “clear or obvious” Sixth Amendment violation. The court held the opposite: the closure was not a violation at all under the triviality doctrine, so it could not be a “clear or obvious” error.

B. Cross-examination: why the 2023 plan was properly excluded

On the second claim, the Seventh Circuit treated the exclusion as a conventional exercise of trial management:

• Remoteness severed probative value. The chemist’s performance improvement plan was dated June 2023; her testing in this case occurred in 2019—about three and a half years earlier. The district judge reasonably found that temporal disconnect made the plan minimally relevant (if relevant at all) to whether the 2019 analysis was reliable.
• Confrontation Clause tolerates reasonable limits. Applying Fensterer and Van Arsdall, the panel emphasized that the Constitution does not constitutionalize every impeachment line. Excluding marginal impeachment, particularly where relevance is thin, is within judicial “wide latitude.”
• Bench-trial dynamic: judge as gatekeeper and factfinder. The opinion observed that in a bench trial, relevance assessments are intertwined with how the judge would weigh the evidence even if admitted, supporting deference to the trial judge’s practical judgment.
• Overwhelming evidence made prejudice implausible. Yumang’s recorded admissions that he possessed and distributed methamphetamine—plus his trial testimony admitting possession—left “no serious doubt” about the drug nature of the substances, undermining any claim that this impeachment could have changed the outcome.

3.3 Impact

A. Public-trial litigation: strengthening “trivial closure” arguments in narrow, administrative contexts

The decision reinforces a pragmatic rule for the Seventh Circuit: a momentary, tightly limited closure—especially one undertaken to address or protect sensitive information and not to conduct substantive adjudication—may be deemed too trivial to trigger the Sixth Amendment.

• Record-making closures are low risk (constitutionally). Yumang suggests that when a closure’s sole function is to create a record of an already-resolved sidebar, the public-trial values are minimally implicated.
• Unpreserved claims face a steep climb. By emphasizing plain-error review (and gesturing toward invited error), the opinion signals that defendants should object contemporaneously if they intend to litigate closures on appeal.

B. Forensic impeachment: temporal nexus matters

The opinion signals that “Giglio-like” personnel information about forensic analysts is not automatically admissible for impeachment. Trial courts may exclude such evidence when:

• the event is remote in time from the analyst’s work in the defendant’s case, and
• the probative link to the analyst’s specific testing is attenuated, and/or
• the case record includes strong independent proof (including admissions) rendering the disputed point effectively uncontested.

Practically, Yumang may encourage litigants to develop a tighter foundation connecting later personnel actions to earlier casework (e.g., contemporaneous proficiency failures, audits of the relevant period, or methodological deficiencies directly tied to the testing performed), rather than relying on generalized, later-occurring performance management documents.

4. Complex Concepts Simplified

• Public-trial right (Sixth Amendment): The Constitution generally requires criminal proceedings to be open so the public can observe fairness and deter misconduct.
• Courtroom “closure” vs. “sidebar”: A closure excludes the public from the courtroom; a sidebar is a private discussion at the judge’s bench typically not audible to spectators. Yumang treats a closure used merely to recreate a sidebar record as even less constitutionally significant than a typical closure during substantive proceedings.
• “Trivial” closure doctrine: Not every brief exclusion violates the Sixth Amendment. Courts assess whether the exclusion meaningfully undermined the values served by openness (fairness, accountability, witness/juror behavior).
• Forfeiture / plain error: If a defendant fails to object at trial, appellate courts generally review only for “plain error”—a clear, obvious mistake that likely affected the outcome and seriously harms the integrity of proceedings.
• Invited error: A party cannot provoke or agree to a procedure and then claim on appeal that the same procedure was reversible error.
• Confrontation Clause: Guarantees an opportunity for effective cross-examination, but judges may block questioning that is only marginally relevant or that wastes time/confuses issues.
• Relevance (Rule 401) and balancing (Rule 403): Evidence can be “relevant” with only a slight tendency to prove something, but judges may still exclude it if its limited value is substantially outweighed by confusion, unfair prejudice, or wasted time.
• Harmless error: Even if a mistake occurred, convictions are affirmed if the error likely did not affect the verdict—particularly where the evidence of guilt is overwhelming.

5. Conclusion

United States v. Michael Yumang adds force to two practical propositions in Seventh Circuit criminal practice. First, a highly limited, administrative closure—here, five minutes to memorialize an unrecorded sidebar tied to a protective order—may be deemed too trivial to implicate the Sixth Amendment, especially on plain-error review. Second, trial judges have broad authority to restrict cross-examination where proposed impeachment is remote and minimally probative, and doing so will not necessarily violate the Confrontation Clause—particularly when other evidence (including the defendant’s admissions) makes the disputed point effectively indisputable. The opinion thus underscores both the importance of timely objections to closure and the need for a concrete, time-linked foundation when attempting to impeach forensic testimony with later personnel actions.