{"id":30325,"date":"2014-06-02T21:48:07","date_gmt":"2014-06-03T01:48:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/?p=30325"},"modified":"2014-06-03T02:52:56","modified_gmt":"2014-06-03T06:52:56","slug":"us-supreme-court-turns-down-appeal-by-ny-times-reporter-facing-jail-for-refusing-to-identify-a-confidential-source","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/?p=30325","title":{"rendered":"US Supreme Court Turns Down Appeal by NY Times Reporter Facing Jail for Refusing to Identify a Confidential Source."},"content":{"rendered":"

By <\/p>\n

ADAM LIPTAK<\/strong><\/p>\n


\nWASHINGTON <\/strong>\u2014 The Supreme Court on Monday turned down an appeal from James Risen, a reporter for The New York Times facing jail for refusing to identify a confidential source.<\/p>\n

The court\u2019s one-line order gave no reasons but effectively sided with the government in a confrontation between what prosecutors said was an imperative to secure evidence in a national security prosecution and what journalists said was an intolerable infringement of press freedom.<\/p>\n

The case arose from a subpoena to Mr. Risen seeking information about his source for a chapter of his 2006 book, \u201cState of War.\u201d Prosecutors say they need Mr. Risen\u2019s testimony to prove that the source was Jeffrey Sterling, a former C.I.A. official.<\/p>\n

The United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, in Richmond, Va., ordered Mr. Risen to comply with the subpoena. Mr. Risen has said he will refuse.<\/p>\n

\u201cI will continue to fight,\u201d Mr. Risen said Monday.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

His lawyer, Joel Kurtzberg, urged the Justice Department to hold its fire.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe ball is now in the government\u2019s court,\u201d Mr. Kurtzberg said in an email. \u201cThe government can choose not to pursue Mr. Risen\u2019s testimony if it wants to. We can only hope now that the government will not seek to have him held in contempt for doing nothing more than reporting the news and keeping his promises\u201d to his sources.<\/p>\n

The Obama administration has sent mixed signals in the case and on the subject of press freedom in general. In its Supreme Court brief in the case, Risen v. United States, No. 13-1009, it told the justices that \u201creporters have no privilege to refuse to provide direct evidence of criminal wrongdoing by confidential sources.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. hinted last week that the Justice Department might choose not to ask the trial judge to jail Mr. Risen for contempt should he refuse to testify.<\/p>\n

The Obama administration has pursued leaks aggressively, bringing criminal charges in eight cases, compared with three under all previous administrations combined.<\/p>\n

At the same time, the administration has supported efforts in Congress to create a federal shield law that would allow judges to quash some subpoenas to journalists. The Justice Department has also issued new internal regulations limiting the circumstances in which prosecutors can subpoena reporters\u2019 testimony and records.<\/p>\n

Asked about the Justice Department\u2019s plans on Monday, Brian Fallon, a spokesman, would say only that \u201cwe are considering the next steps in this case.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dean Baquet, executive editor of The Times, said the Supreme Court\u2019s decision not to hear Mr. Risen\u2019s case was disappointing.<\/p>\n

\u201cJim Risen is a groundbreaking national security reporter who continues to do powerful work,\u201d Mr. Baquet said. \u201cJournalists like Jim depend on confidential sources to get information the public needs to know. The court\u2019s failure to protect journalists\u2019 right to protect their sources is deeply troubling.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Supreme Court has not directly addressed whether journalists have protections from subpoenas since its 1972 ruling in Branzburg v. Hayes. In that 5-to-4 decision, the court ruled that the First Amendment provided no such protection against grand jury subpoenas.<\/p>\n

Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr. joined the majority but also wrote a short, cryptic concurrence calling on judges to strike the \u201cproper balance between freedom of the press and the obligation of all citizens to give relevant testimony.\u201d<\/p>\n

For decades, press lawyers had considerable success in persuading courts to interpret the concurrence broadly. That run of victories started to wane in 2003, when Judge Richard A. Posner of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, in Chicago, surveyed the legal landscape.<\/p>\n

************************<\/strong><\/p>\n

A coalition of news organizations, which included The Times, filed a supporting brief urging the Supreme Court to hear Mr. Risen\u2019s case to bring clarity to what it said was a confusing legal landscape in which the scope of press protections varied in different parts of the country, and in state and federal courthouses in the same city. All concerned, the brief said, \u201cwould benefit from this court addressing these fundamental issues about the protections available to a free press in a democracy.\u201d<\/p>\n

The case against Mr. Sterling concerns Operation Merlin, a C.I.A. plan to sabotage Iranian nuclear research by having a Russian scientist sell flawed blueprints to Iran. A chapter of Mr. Risen\u2019s book described the operation.<\/p>\n

In 2011, Judge Leonie M. Brinkema largely quashed the subpoena to Mr. Risen. \u201cA criminal trial subpoena is not a free pass for the government to rifle through a reporter\u2019s notebook,\u201d she wrote, adding that prosecutors could prove their case against Mr. Sterling without Mr. Risen\u2019s testimony.<\/p>\n

A divided three-judge panel of the Fourth Circuit reversed, relying on the Supreme Court\u2019s Branzburg decision.<\/p>\n

\u201cClearly, Risen\u2019s direct, firsthand account of the criminal conduct indicted by the grand jury cannot be obtained by alternative means, as Risen is without dispute the only witness who can offer this critical testimony,\u201d Judge William B. Traxler Jr. wrote for the majority.<\/p>\n

In dissent, Judge Roger Gregory said that \u201cthe First Amendment was designed to counteract the very result the majority reaches today.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe majority exalts the interests of the government,\u201d he wrote, \u201cwhile unduly trampling those of the press, and in doing so, severely impinges on the press and the free flow of information in our society<\/p>\n

COURTESY:NEW YORK TIMES<\/em><\/p>\n

Tweet<\/a><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By ADAM LIPTAK WASHINGTON \u2014 The Supreme Court on Monday turned down an appeal from James Risen, a reporter for The New York Times facing jail for refusing to identify a confidential source. The court\u2019s one-line order gave no reasons but effectively sided with the government in a confrontation between what prosecutors said was an …<\/p>\n

Continue reading ‘US Supreme Court Turns Down Appeal by NY Times Reporter Facing Jail for Refusing to Identify a Confidential Source.’ »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[12],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30325"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30325"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30325\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30326,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30325\/revisions\/30326"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}