Prior restraint

The California Court of Appeal threw out a lower court's order prohibiting the Los Angeles Times from publishing photographs of a defendant on trial for murder last week.

"[W]e conclude the superior court's order precluding publication of photographs lawfully taken unconstitutionally violates the prohibition against prior restraint of speech," wrote Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Sanjay T. Kumar in an unanimous opinion.

A California state appellate court has ordered a judge to rescind her order banning a newspaper from publishing photographs taken of a murder defendant, unless she can demonstrate a compelling reason why the pictures should not be printed.

The Washington, D.C., judge who last week issued a prior restraint against The National Law Journal today withdrew that restraining order at the request of juice maker POM Wonderful, which had initially sought to keep the newspaper from publishing information obtained from a public court file that was supposed to have been sealed.

The National Law Journal has been prohibited by court order from publishing information it obtained legally.

D.C. Superior Court Judge Judith Bartnoff issued a temporary restraining order against the National Law Journal last Friday after she discovered the news organization was planning to publish a story regarding the fee dispute between District of Columbia-based law firm Hogan Lovells and one of its former clients, beverage maker POM Wonderful. POM had hired Hogan Lovells to represent the company during a regulatory investigation.

Three news organizations have appealed last week's order from the Pentagon that bans four journalists from covering proceedings at Guantanamo Bay, The Miami Herald reports.

Four experienced journalists have been banned from reporting on the military commission proceedings at Guantanamo Bay because they published the name of a witness that was already in the public record, ABC News reported.

The media will not be allowed to interview a prisoner slated to be executed by firing squad in Utah, The Salt Lake Tribune reports.

The Utah Department of Corrections said in a letter to the media that allowing interviews of Ronnie Lee Gardner, who was sentenced to death for fatally shooting an attorney during an attempted escape from custody, would shift the focus away from the victims of his crime.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday overturned a federal law that criminalized videos showing the torture and killing of animals after deciding that it violated First Amendment free speech rights.

The Supreme Court of Ohio has prohibited the enforcement of a gag order banning the news media from reporting on a criminal trial until a jury has been seated in the second trial of another defendant charged in the same incident.

Supreme Court justices signaled their concerns about the constitutionality of a decade-old law that criminalizes depictions of animal cruelty on Tuesday during the oral arguments in U.S. v. Stevens, a case that involves the conviction of a Virginia man who made videos that included dog fighting.