Subpoenas

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.

The restriction of a criminal defendant’s cross-examination of a reporter who invoked his privilege not to testify, but was compelled to do so anyway, violated the defendant’s constitutional right to confront witnesses against him, a federal appellate court ruled earlier this week.

A Boston Globe reporter is privileged from having to testify about her coverage of the city’s crackdown on street performers, a federal court ruled earlier this week.

A state judge in Texas earlier this week quashed a subpoena ordering a journalist to testify in a murder trial, in a rare test of the reporter's privilege in criminal courts since Texas enacted its Free Flow of Information Act in 2009.

Defense attorneys argued that, as shown by her articles, Donna Fielder, a staff writer for the Denton Record-Chronicle, was privy to essential information that would refute investigators’ testimonies concerning the defendant.

A former CIA officer was indicted last month for allegedly providing a New York Times reporter with classified information. He is the latest in a string of leakers prosecuted by the Obama administration.

Jeffrey Sterling, 43, of O’Fallon, Mo., was indicted on 10 counts, including six counts of unauthorized disclosure of national defense information and one count of obstruction of justice. He was arrested Thursday in St. Louis.

A federal judge in Seattle Friday quashed the third subpoena served on a reporter by lawyers representing the Chicago Police Department in a civil rights lawsuit, highlighting in her ruling the importance of protecting the First Amendment-based reporter’s privilege not to testify about sources or materials used in the newsgathering process.

A U.S. district judge in Kansas refused last week to quash a subpoena issued to a human rights group and an author who claimed a First Amendment-based reporter’s privilege in objecting to turning over research notes that included witness accounts of the Rwandan genocide.

An outspoken pain relief advocate has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to shield her from a grand jury subpoena that threatens her First Amendment right to criticize the government, according to a recently unsealed but still redacted petition in a case that also has implications for journalists called before grand juries.

A federal judge quashed a criminal defense lawyer’s subpoena of a reporter last month, ruling that it violated the reporter’s constitutional right not to testify and publicly recognizing the importance of the newsgathering process.

A Buffalo, N.Y., judge issued a subpoena Friday for the notes of a television reporter’s interview with 44-year-old Muzzammil Hassan, who is accused of beheading his wife in 2009. Erie County Judge Thomas Franczyk also prohibited Hassan from doing any on-camera interviews.