N.Y. county judge upholds reporter's rights under Shield Law
By The Associated Press
11.08.02
SYRACUSE, N.Y. — A judge has strongly affirmed the "unqualified" protection of the state's Shield Law for journalists and set aside a subpoena forcing a newspaper reporter to surrender a document received from a confidential source for a news story.
"The statute was clearly intended to protect the public's right to know," said Onondaga County Judge Anthony Aloi, noting there was nothing equivocal about the protections afforded to journalists in the 32-year-old Shield Law section of the state's Civil Rights Law.
The document in question was a printout containing the home addresses and telephone numbers of members of the Onondaga County Sheriff's Department. Reporter John O'Brien used the information in writing a Feb. 10 story in The Post-Standard of Syracuse documenting how some deputies were violating state law by living outside the county and listing false addresses.
The sheriff's department initiated an investigation to try to identify the source of the roster information. In September, the district attorney's office served O'Brien with a subpoena directing him to surrender the document to a county grand jury. The newspaper then initiated legal action to quash the subpoena, arguing it violated O'Brien's rights as a professional journalist under the state's Shield Law.
Yesterday, the newspaper's lawyer, S. Paul Battaglia, contended the sheriff's department wanted the computer printout from O'Brien for the sole purpose of identifying the reporter's source. Battaglia noted O'Brien had promised the source confidentiality and had promised not to show the roster information to anyone else.
The Shield Law not only protected O'Brien from revealing the identity of his source, but also from turning over the information he had obtained from the source for the story, Battaglia contended.
The district attorney's office, however, argued that O'Brien was in criminal violation of the law by possessing stolen property.
Although he set aside the subpoena, Aloi said he was concerned about the issue, which was raised by sheriff's department officials, of the safety of the department's law enforcement officers if their addresses and phone numbers were revealed.
Since the newspaper had offered to destroy the document in trying to work out a settlement with the sheriff's department, Aloi ordered that done.