News media win yearlong battle to access madam's 'black book'
By The Associated Press
11.10.01
FREDERICK, Md. — Two news organizations, after a yearlong legal battle, have gained access to an escort service’s business records which contain the name of at least one local public official.
Frederick County Circuit Judge G. Edward Dwyer Jr. on Nov. 7 gave The Frederick News-Post and the Associated Press a key to a storage locker holding records from the Corporate Affair Referral Service, but restricted the news organizations from publishing the names of private citizens included in the records.
The material had been held since March in the locker at a mini-storage complex in Frederick while the media organizations sought access in court. The documents had been seized by police during a July 1999 raid of the escort service.
Inside the locker, there was a cardboard box containing a manila envelope with four compact discs and a three-inch floppy disk. The box also held three binders with black covers and a two-inch stack of loose sheets of paper. Also in the storage area were nine white trash bags full of documents shredded by a lawyer for Corporate Affair before a judge stopped him and locked up the records.
The computer discs and binders were marked “Maryland State Police computer crimes unit.”
The sheets appeared to contain a partial printout of information on the discs. The discs and the sheets contained names, telephone numbers, street addresses and e-mail addresses.
The news organizations obtained the documents after Dwyer signed an order Nov. 7 allowing the media only to publish the names of “public officials and public figures.” Dwyer did not define either term.
Henry Abrams, an attorney representing the newspaper and the wire service, objected to the restriction, saying it constituted prior restraint on the news organizations’ right to publish, possibly violating the First Amendment.
Dwyer said he included the restriction because Abrams, in an earlier hearing, had said the news organizations intended to publish only the names of public officials and public figures.
“We just never addressed that issue of what I considered to be a concern from you,” Dwyer told Abrams on Nov. 7. “Today, I intend to leave it in there unless you give me a good reason not to.”
Michael Powell, managing editor of the News-Post, said the newspaper would consider challenging the restriction.
Dwyer ruled on Oct. 23 that the city erred in denying the news organizations’ requests under Maryland’s Public Information Act for copies of the documents.
The judge also faulted Mayor James S. Grimes’ decision to return the documents to the then-attorney of confessed madam Angelika Potter, the owner of Corporate Affair. The lawyer, Richard Bricken, shredded some of them despite the news organizations’ pending appeal.
Meanwhile, included in the information found in the locker was the name of Frederick Alderman Blaine Young, who has previously said that his name appeared in the records because he hired women from the escort service to dance at parties.
The Young entry was in a set of documents marked “address book.” Beneath Young’s name, the entry reads “mayor’s son.” Young is the son of Ronald N. Young, a former Frederick mayor who is now the deputy secretary of the state Department of Planning.
Alderman Young decided not to seek re-election after it was reported earlier this year that he was listed in the records.
Young said Nov. 7 that he did not pay for sex and did not break any law.
“I have never been charged, and the media’s having fun being my judge and jury,” he said.
Young is a political ally of Grimes, who lost re-election Nov. 6 in a mayoral race spiced by the “black book” scandal.
Grimes contended the News-Post’s coverage of his administration, including the records dispute, was biased.
“I absolutely feel that the same thing that happened at the World Trade Center has hit me,” he said Nov. 7. “I was terrorized by The Frederick News-Post.”