Secretary of State John Kerry called on Edward Snowden today to "man up," return to the United States and face trial. Then, he said, Snowden could give his side of the story to the American people.

"If he has a complaint about what's wrong with American surveillance, come back here and stand in our system of justice and make his case," said Kerry.

Problem is, it's possible that Snowden's case would never reach the American people in full.

"The American court system may not allow Snowden full liberty to tell his story in an open court," says Eve Burton.

Burton is one of the world's most decorated First Amendment lawyers (and a general counsel to the Esquire parent Hearst Corporation), and she says there's no legal guarantee the American public will be able to hear Snowden's case if he were to return and go to trial.

"The U.S Constitution requires that courtrooms should be open to the public. But often how open depends on the judge and the case when it involves information the government classifies as 'state secrets,'" says Burton, who has won First Amendment awards from the Society of Professional Journalists and The National Press Club.

"Even when leaks have brought classified information into a public forum, the government typically argues that there is continuing harm and seeks closure. The public then relies on the press to make contrary arguments in favor of open courtrooms. It makes the plight of the whistleblower more uncertain -- whether they will or will not have an open and public forum to tell the full story."

It all further highlights the problems with Kerry's "man up" statement, in which he told Snowden to raise "a complaint about what's wrong with American surveillance."

Snowden tried to do just that more than ten times internally at the National Security Agency. Even as a contractor who was not protected by whistleblower laws, he "manned up," confronting ten different officials on the issue of illegal surveillance. He was rebuffed every time. To make positive change, his only remaining option was to leak documents showing unlawful activity — and to give them to journalists, Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras, who are releasing the most egregious findings over time in an effort to avoid harming the American intelligence community.

Since then, even in his strongest condemnations, President Obama has reiterated that "this debate (over warrantless wiretapping) will make us stronger" and has moved to scale back or eliminate the NSA's metadata programs.

"If he cares so much about America and he believes in America, he should trust the American system of justice," Kerry said.

Here's the problem: Edward Snowden trusted the American system of justice more than ten times, and it told him to put up with and aid government overreach, or go to prison.

A citizen doesn't have to believe in every broken system in his or her country to believe in the idea of it.

It's possible, Burton believes, that while the press was waging a battle for openness and the judge was considering the government's effort at closure that Snowden could spend a number of years in prison awaiting trial.

"These cases rarely run on a fast track" she said.

Those kinds of theatrics might make for the trial of century and some good TV — one that might call for a years-long national discussion about secret government overreach. But it's possible, fittingly, that we will not see or hear a second of it.

So is there no out for Edward Snowden?

"The right to a trial in this country brings little certainty for Snowden. A trial is by nature a roll of the dice," she says. "Could he make a plea deal to go to jail for 20 years? Yes, probably, he could, but that would be conceding a level of defeat that he has so far shown he doesn't want to do."

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