Gag orders

In the backdrop of mounting media attention, the attorneys for two boys withdrew their motion on Monday to charge a 17-year-old Kentucky teenager for contempt after she potentially violated a court order by identifying them on Twitter as her attackers in a juvenile sexual assault case.

“There you go, lock me up,” Savannah Dietrich tweeted when she named the teens who pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting her. “I’m not protecting anyone that made my life a living Hell.”

The Rhode Island Supreme Court upheld the dismissal of a defamation claim brought by a restaurant owner against two journalists for their coverage of a 2009 "off the record" event at his restaurant where attendees included politicians, businesspeople and press members.

A federal appellate court ruled Monday that a Texas journalist had standing to challenge a lower court’s gag order in an alleged terrorist’s criminal trial, but the court still upheld the order barring those involved in the case from communicating with the media.

Ordering lawyers to comply with rules of professional conduct was a less restrictive alternative to issuing a gag order during a high-profile politically charged Alabama gambling-corruption retrial, the presiding judge said in an opinion explaining the rationale for his decision yesterday.

A Texas district judge unhappy about media coverage has loosened -- but not completely eliminated -- a court order that severely limited news gathering in a murder trial in Fort Worth after a newspaper requested her to reconsider.

The U.S. Court of Appeals in New Orleans (5th Cir.) yesterday granted a Texas journalist's request to expedite his appeal of a gag order issued in the pre-trial proceedings of a Saudi citizen accused of the attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction in the U.S.

A federal appellate court last week rejected a Texas journalist’s attempt to overturn a gag order in a case against a Saudi citizen accused of terrorism, but left open the possibility that the reporter could continue his appeal by other means.

James Clark, a Lubbock, Texas, broadcast journalist who is representing himself, said he plans to continue to pursue his bid to overturn a gag order issued by U.S. District Court Judge Sam Cummings in the case of U.S. v. Aldawsari.

A federal judge in Texas rejected a local journalist's request today to open to the public a status hearing in U.S. v. Aldawsari, a case in which a Saudi Arabian man is accused of plotting to attack several U.S. targets.

A federal judge in Florida last week refused to issue a gag order against attorneys at the Southern Poverty Law Center and the plaintiffs they represent in a case involving alleged civil rights abuses, finding that the publicity generated from plaintiffs' and counsel's statements to date would not interfere with a fair trial.

A California state court in Placer County heard arguments Tuesday on a motion from the local district attorney's office for a controversial gag order in a shopping mall arson case. The attorney for the accused and the Sacramento Bee opposed the gag order, which, if granted as proposed, would apply not only to the parties and their attorneys, but also to investigating agencies and their employees as well.