-Caveat Lector-
>From http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/front/1367083
}}}>Begin
April 15, 2002, 4:29PM
Writer held in Houston jail for months loses appeal
>From staff and wire reports
A freelance writer who spent more than five months in jail for refusing to turn over
research notes about a Houston society killing lost her bid for a hearing before the
U.S. Supreme Court today.
Vanessa Leggett, 33, spent 168 days in a federal detention center in downtown
Houston, the longest incarceration of any U.S. writer who has based rejection of a
grand jury subpoena on First Amendment rights.
The Supreme Court did not comment in turning down Leggett's request that the court
use her case to give writers and reporters more rights to protect the confidentiality
of
their sources. A federal appeals court ruled against Leggett last year, when she was
still in jail.
Leggett was freed from jail early this year. In July, U.S. District Judge Melinda
Harmon jailed Leggett for contempt of court after the writer refused to give a federal
grand jury her notes and tapes of interviews with confidential sources for a book
about the 1997 killing of Doris Angleton in River Oaks. The grand jury apparently
focused on Angleton's husband, millionaire and former bookie Robert Angleton, who
was acquitted of murder in state court.
Angleton was indicted by a federal grand jury in January on charges of has since
been indicted on charges of conspiracy, murder for hire and a weapons violation. He
could get up to life in prison or the death penalty on each of the first two counts and
weapons violations.
The judge, whose jailing of Leggett was affirmed by a federal appeals court in
August, let Leggett go because the federal grand jury's term ended.
Leggett's lawyer, Mike DeGeurin, sought to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to strike
down Harmon's contempt ruling and toclear up legal issues affecting journalism
across the nation.
The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, among several organizations
that rallied to Leggett 's cause, has said that she never would have been jailed if the
Justice Department had followed its own 40-year-old guidelines. The rules say the
government should subpoena journalists only when it is seeking information that
cannot be obtained any other way and the request for such information is specific.
The grand jury asked Leggett to disclose any conversations she had with certain
police officers, prosecutors and others, Reporters Committee executive director Lucy
Dalglish said she learned from DeGeurin. Robert Angleton's lawyer, Michael
Ramsey, has reported rumors that the grand jury was looking for evidence of law
enforcement "leaks" about the investigation rather than for information about any
crimes stemming directly from Doris Angleton's shooting death.
The case is Leggett v. United States, 01-983.
End<{{{
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