Reporters Ask Judge for Home Detention

Washington Post ^ | July 2, 2005 | Carol D. Leonnig

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Lawyers for Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper yesterday urged a federal judge not to jail him for refusing to discuss his confidential sources with a prosecutor, arguing in a court filing that there is no need for his testimony now that his employer has turned over his notes, which identify the sources.

Attorneys for New York Times reporter Judith Miller, who, like Cooper, faces four months in jail for defying Chief U.S. District Judge Thomas F. Hogan's order to cooperate with a special prosecutor's investigation, also urged Hogan yesterday not to jail her. In papers filed yesterday, her lawyers said that because she intends to go to jail rather than disclose the name of her source, incarceration would be "merely punitive" and would not cause her to obey the court

Both reporters said in the documents that if Hogan insists on incarceration, they will propose being detained under restrictive conditions at home. They said the cost of electronic bracelets and other monitoring equipment would be borne by private entities, not taxpayers, and that they would give up much of their contact with the outside world

If jailed, however, Cooper suggested he should be sent to a federal prison camp in Cumberland, in close proximity to Washington, where he lives with his wife, Mandy Grunwald, and their 6-year-old son. Miller proposed a federal women's prison camp in Danbury, Conn., which her lawyers described as "safe" and "near to Ms. Miller's 76-year-old husband," retired book publisher Jason Epstein, in New York City.

Most people found in contempt by a federal court in the District serve their time in the D.C. jail.

[PzLdr]

BIG difference. Every jurisdiction recognizes doctor-patient privilege, lawyer-client privilege, penitent privilege, spousal privilege by LAW[statute, precedent, etc]. Some states have expanded the spousal privilege to include parent-child . States that want to protect reporters enact shield laws that grants them a privilege that has no history in Anglo-American jurisprudence [unlike the others]. Don't like the lack of privilege-go to the appropriate legislative body. As for me, I was a prosecutor for 26 years. Burn 'em.

[xzins]

Disagree. If I go to the legislative branch about it, then I'm doing what is forbidden: making a law abridging.

It's a specified constitutional issue, and therefore, not one for the states to determine. It is inappropriate, by the way, for the states to say anything via a law about priest/penitent, either. "No law" = no law.

That right is constitutional whether the legislature acknowledges it or not.

[PzLdr]

No. It's not. The other privileges were recognized well before the Constitution. The Founders and the original 13 never contemplated a Shield Law.They merely guaranteed the press the right to print what it wished [to Thomas Jefferson's eventual chagrine] What you are doing is providing a protection that does not apply to the profession of journalism, and allowing people not protected to disobey the laws that apply to every other citizen, absent a recognized privilege. And if your reasoning was the norm, so many states, including New York, wouldn't enact Shield Laws for journalists-there'd be no need- a position even the liberal idiots on the bench in this state have never recognized.

[Patriot from Philly]

I think it's the opposite. I think they let the higher level know but the local cops and magistrates were not in on it. The US gave the Italian government plausible deniability-they have to live there, I guess is the reasoning.

[Mad Mammoth]

Do take the 2nd Amendment symbolically, too?

Not if you're in front of me. (LOL - that is a JOKE son, not to be taken literally or construed as any sort of threat, so relax.)

Seriously now...

The bottom line to this nonsense is that you've got two reporters who defied a grand jury, their testimony would have been protected had they cooperated, but they chose to show their ass not only to that grand jury, but to the entire judicial system.

There is absolutely NO 'right' to keep anonymous sources anonymous. Find it in the Constitution, and don't hide behind the First Amendment, because the press is obligated to use that Amendment with a certain degree of responsibility, which Cooper and Miller did not.

But even giving those two chowderheads the benefit of the doubt, they were allowed to play the journalistic martyrs while their peers all said Hail Woodwards and Hail Bernsteins, and they fought it all the way to the Supreme Court, who turned 'em down flat, and essentially told them to either comply with the Court, or go to jail.

They not only have NO right to protect anonymous sources (especially if under subpoena from a federal grand jury), but they have NO right to demand a certain sentence, indeed it is the height of hypocrisy for those two clowns to now urge the very court they showed such blatant contempt for, to "go easy on them".

As for your conjuring up the Second Amendment, nice try but no cigar.

The Second Amendment is not absolute, and is not without responsibilities for the gun owner. And there ARE limitations, i.e., I doubt that a 2nd Amendment argument can be made for the private ownership of mothballed 16 inch guns from the U.S.S. New Jersey. Likewise, the freedom that reporters have under the First Amendment is not absolute, it comes with responsibilties, and that's the way it should be.

[xzins]

Again, I will always advocate that no law = no law. I am certain it means that in religious areas, so I must have it mean that in other parts of the same sentence. Otherwise, I acknowledge that it doesn't mean that in religious concerns.

I own a lot of guns, mm, so I get the joke. :>)

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

There were "regular" troops in the military and there were the "irregulars." The militia were always "irregulars." One wanted to provide some "regulation" to the Militia so that it would be an effective force in the protection of a nation. Therefore, "a well-'regulated' Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State" means that the irregulars require common elements to make them lethal. This thought stands alone.

Therefore, the 2nd Amendment is inviolable, and ultimately for the security of the nation. It, too, stands alone.

"The right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."

Incidentally, there is no way that the National Guard or Reserve fit this description. They obviously are "regulars," and are equipped as regulars....tanks, planes, artillery, etc.

A Militia is always irregular.

[CA Conservative]

If they don't apply to the press, then how is the press being charged for violating them?

This is where we part ways. The law was not written specifically to force reporters to give up their sources. The law was written to compel any person with knowledge of a crime to supply that information when asked by the proper authority. The 'press' is not being charged with violating the law - two individual citizens, who also happen to be reporters, are being charged.

It sounds like you believe that reporters should be above the laws the rest of us have to obey, just by virtue of their choice of careers. I could not disgree more vehemently. No one should be above the law, including reporters, judges, congressmen and presidents. If you don't like the law, lobby to have it chaged for everyone.

[xzins]

The question we have to answer is simple. Were the reporters in the process of gathering information from a source or did they just stumble across a crime?