[Paul is the First Amendment Ombudsman at the Freedom Forum. --DBM]

*********

From: Paul McMasters <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "'[EMAIL PROTECTED]'" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: RE: Prosecutors, judges keep Vanessa Leggett in jail for 37 days
Date: Sun, 26 Aug 2001 16:03:44 -0400

Declan,

        Here's an excerpt from the column on the Leggett case I posted last
week:

        From the northernmost reaches of Canada to the tip of Chile, only
three people in the Western Hemisphere languish in prison for doing the work
of a journalist. Two of them are in jail in Cuba and the third has begun her
second month of imprisonment in the United States.

        This rather embarrassing piece of news comes to us from the
Committee to Protect Journalists, which monitors despots and dictators
around the world who abuse, harass and jail journalists considered
inconvenient to official policies. Our sense of ourselves is that our
government shouldn't be a candidate for membership in that kind of club.

        But there we are.

        Vanessa Leggett, a 33-year-old writer and university lecturer in
Houston, was sent to jail on July 20 by a federal judge. The charge was
contempt of court. The offense was refusing to turn over four years' worth
of interview material to a federal grand jury investigating possible charges
against a millionaire bookmaker implicated in the murder of his wife.

        Those bare facts allow us to breathe a bit easier. After all, a
journalist shouldn't be above the law and law enforcement officials must
have a great deal of latitude to investigate and prosecute crimes fully. But
the details beyond those facts provoke a number of issues that test
government officials' sensitivity to First Amendment rights and values.

        Among the critical questions that arise from the details:

        What is the definition of a journalist and who gets to fashion and
enforce that definition?

        To what extent can journalists thus defined be compelled to serve as
an arm of the law?

        When does aggressive prosecution of criminal suspects turn into
harassment or vendettas against journalists?

        More important, when press freedom and law enforcement priorities
collide, which better serves democratic principles and interests: subjecting
the First Amendment rights of the press to criminal sanctions, or compelling
the government to exhaust its own formidable investigative resources before
jailing an innocent civilian independently recording the process for the
public?

        The rest of the column is at
http://www.freedomforum.org/templates/document.asp?documentID=14670

Paul McMasters




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