Fifth Amendment

A District Court judge ruled this week that the Detroit Free Press must hand over documents and provide a witness in a long-running case involving former federal prosecutor Richard Convertino and his quest to reveal a reporter’s anonymous source.

Judge Robert Cleland’s ruling requires the Michigan newspaper to turn over documents directly or indirectly related to Convertino and present a witness who can testify at a February deposition for the former prosecutor's lawsuit against the Department of Justice.

A federal appeals court allowed a former Detroit prosecutor to continue investigating the identity of a source who leaked information about an internal ethics probe against him to a Pulitzer-Prize winning newspaper reporter. The decision, which was released Friday, overturns a district court’s ruling that threw out the case last year and now leaves a newspaper vulnerable to investigations eight years after a U.S. Department of Justice insider leaked information to the reporter.

A federal judge in New York recently halted enforcement of a controversial section of an anti-terrorism bill that the court found harms First Amendment rights. Plaintiffs to the case included noted activists, journalists and a member of Icelandic parliament who argued the law had a chilling effect.

A federal judge ended a lengthy legal battle that centered around a reporter's confidential sources yesterday when he dismissed a former federal prosecutor’s lawsuit against the Department of Justice.

A Michigan federal court today ruled that Detroit Free Press reporter David Ashenfelter properly asserted his Fifth Amendment privilege against self incrimination, allowing him to keep the identities of confidential sources a secret.

The plaintiff, former U.S. prosecutor Richard Convertino, had been seeking the names of Ashenfelter's Justice Department sources since 2006 for a Privacy Act lawsuit.

Former U.S. prosecutor Richard Convertino is pressing ahead with his argument that Detroit Free Press reporter David Ashenfelter should not have been allowed to use the Fifth Amendment to protect the identities of his sources.

Detroit Free Press reporter David Ashenfelter wants to explain privately to a federal judge in Michigan his reasons for invoking the Fifth Amendment to protect his confidential sources.

In court papers filed Wednesday, former federal prosecutor Richard Convertino called reporter David Ashenfelter’s invocation of the Fifth Amendment, in an attempt to keep from having to reveal his confidential sources, both “speculative” and “unreasonable.”