Everything online journalists need to protect their legal rights. This free resource culls from all Reporters Committee resources and includes exclusive content on digital media law issues.
In an effort to persuade prosecutors to withdraw a subpoena for Innocence Project students’ notes, grades, and other information, a lawyer for the criminal defendant whose conviction is being questioned withdrew yesterday some of the exculpatory evidence journalism students had previously uncovered, the Daily Northwesternreported.
The Kansas Supreme Court yesterday ruled that prosecutors may force Dodge City Globe reporter Claire O’Brien to testify about her news gathering activities and materials in a murder trial.
Without ordering a hearing in the matter, the court in a two-sentence order denied the paper’s request for relief and rejected all potential friend-of-the-court briefs in the case as “moot.”
An Ohio judge has postponed the trial of a woman charged in the death of her infant daughter until the state Supreme Court rules on the constitutionality of his order barring prohibiting media coverage, The (Toledo) Bladereported.
An Ohio judge has ordered the news media not to report on a criminal trial involving the death of a toddler, even though it is open to the public, The [Toledo] Blade reported.
The Kansas judge who will preside over the murder trial of the man charged with killing a prominent abortion doctor agreed today to open jury selection to the media after the Kansas Supreme Court urged him to reconsider his decision to ban reporters, according to reports by The Associated Press and The Wichita Eagle.
Media organizations today urged an Illinois judge to block a criminal prosecutor’s subpoena for the notes and records from students in Medill's Innocence Project at Northwestern University.
County prosecutors in Illinois have subpoenaed the grades, notes, recordings, and electronic correspondence of journalism students who have been gathering evidence that could exonerate a convicted criminal defendant, the Chicago Tribune reported.
The attorney who represented the Richmond Times-Dispatchin the landmark First Amendment case guaranteeing the public a right of access to attend criminal trials died on Wednesday. Alexander “Sandy” Wellford was 78, the newspaper said.
An Arkansas judge this week refused to back off a court order sealing jail records in the case of a man charged with killing a Little Rock anchorwoman -- even though state law says such records are public.
A federal judge presiding over the prosecution of Thomas Kontogiannis, a friend of former Congressman Randall "Duke" Cunningham, released a previously-secret brief last week in which he criticized government prosecutors for “mischaracteriz[ing] substantial, relevant portions of the record” in their filings before an appellate court.
The brief was unsealed over vigorous government objections.
