Acronyms (colloquial) CIPA, CICTPA | Effective October 15, 1980 | |
 | ||
Other short titles Classified Information Procedures Act of 1980 Long title An Act to provide certain pretrial, trial, and appellate procedures for criminal cases involving classified information. Nicknames Classified Information Criminal Trial Procedures Act Enacted by | ||
The Classified Information Procedures Act or (CIPA, Pub.L. 96–456, 94 Stat. 2025, enacted October 15, 1980 through S
Contents
Legislative Revision History
The hidden table below lists the acts of Congress that affected the Classified Information Procedures Act directly. The years in which the legislative revisions were made appear in bold text preceding the Public Laws that enacted them. The links to the codification and section notes may provide additional information about the legislative changes as well.
Applicable Presidential Executive Orders
Purpose
The primary purpose of CIPA was to limit the practice of graymail by criminal defendants in possession of sensitive government secrets. "Graymail" refers to the threat by a criminal defendant to disclose classified information during the course of a trial. The graymailing defendant essentially presented the government with a "dilemma": either allowed disclosure of the classified information or dismiss the indictment.
The procedural protections of CIPA protect unnecessary disclosure of classified information.
CIPA was not intended to infringe on a defendant's right to a fair trial or to change the existing rules of evidence in criminal procedure, and largely codified the power of district courts to come to pragmatic accommodations of the government's secrecy interests with the traditional right of public access to criminal proceedings. Courts therefore did not radically alter their practices with the passage of CIPA; instead, the Act simply made it clear that the measures courts already were taking under their inherent case-management powers were permissible.
CIPA, by its terms, covers only criminal cases. CIPA only applies when classified information is involved, as defined in the Act's Section 1.