Freedom of press prevails
Attack on 'New Times' was a danger to us all
Clint Bolick
Goldwater Institute
Oct. 21, 2007 12:00 AM
Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas did the right thing on Friday by revoking a subpoena that was an egregious abuse of prosecutorial discretion, violating not only freedom of the press but the privacy rights of tens of thousands of Arizonans.
Chillingly, however, it took the willingness of two courageous newspaper publishers, Michael Lacey and Jim Larkin, to go to jail in order for this abuse of government power and its wholesale violation of privacy rights to come to light.
The Phoenix New Times has published a series of critical articles about Sheriff Joe Arpaio and Thomas. In 2004, one of the articles published Arpaio's home address, which allegedly is a crime even though the information is obtainable from various public records.
On that basis, an independent prosecutor hired by the county attorney issued a subpoena that demanded not only all the New Times reporters' notes about several articles written about Arpaio - itself a blatant First Amendment violation - but also the Internet address, pages and Web sites visited by all people who visited the New Times Web site since January 2004.
Such a sweeping subpoena might not survive scrutiny even in the national-security context. In this context, it represented an appalling abuse of power. Thomas essentially conceded as much, dismissing independent prosecutor Dennis Wilenchik and saying that "serious missteps" had taken place....
azcentral.com
...By making the subpoena public, Lacey and Larkin violated the secrecy of grand-jury proceedings, the misdemeanor offense for which they were arrested.
But grand-jury secrecy is not intended to shield abusive government power. By the publishers' courageous act of civil disobedience, prosecutorial excess was brought into the light of day, and in the end, not even the county attorney could defend it.... |
