About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline
LOG IN
LOG IN

19 Comm. Law. 1 (2001-2002)
Vanessa Leggett Serves Maximum Jail Time, First Amendment-Based Reporter's Privilege under Seige

handle is hein.journals/comlaw19 and id is 101 raw text is: Publication of the Forum on Communications Law American Bar Association Volume 19, Number 4, Winter 2002 ow EXTRA! EXTRA! Vanessa Leggett Serves Maximum Jail Time, First Amendment-Based Reporter's Privilege Under Seige DANIEL SCARDINO In order to enjoy the inestimable benefits that the liberty of the press ensures, it is necessary to submit to the inevitable evils that it creates.' When a federal grand jury was con- vened to investigate the possibility of filing federal murder charges against Houstonian Robert Angleton, the city braced itself for another media frenzy. In 1998, Robert Angleton had been ac- quitted in state court of murdering his wife, socialite Doris Angleton, who was found shot to death on April 16, 1997, in her River Oaks home. The state court trial had been a media cir- cus, replete with a rumored millionaire bookie, his ne'er-do-well brother, a messy impending divorce, and a jail- house confession and suicide. However, the person who received the most attention was not directly in- volved in the murder. Vanessa Leggett, a part-time college instructor and aspiring true crime writer, stole the !-'light when she refused to turn over to the fed- Daniel Scardino (dscardino@jw.cotn) is an associate at Jackson Walker LLP. in Austin, Texas. Jackson Walker partners Bob Latham and Charles Babcock and associate John Edwards filed amicus briefs for several reporters' associations in support of Vanessa Leggett's Fifth Circuit and U.S. Supreme Court appeals, discussed in this article. eral grand jury information that she had gathered during her four-year investiga- tion. On July 19, 2001, Leggett was held in civil contempt under 28 U.S.C. § 1826 as a recalcitrant witness.2 She went to jail the next day and was not released until January 4, 2002, when the grand jury ended its Angleton investigation without handing down a single indictment. Leggett was incarcerated longer than any reporter in U.S. history for refusing to disclose research collected in the course of newsgathering.' As is usual in states like Texas with no shield laws, neither the district court nor the Fifth Circuit showed compassion for Leggett's professional integrity and loy- alty to her confidential sources. She was forced to serve the maximum term for contempt of court, which was the short- er of either the duration of the grand jury investigation or eighteen months. But the most disconcerting aspect of the Leggett case is that neither court ad- equately investigated the actions of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) or balanced the interests of the First Amendment against the government's need for Leggett's research. Indeed, there may have been no need for her in- formation at all. On January 8, 2002, four days after Leggett's release, the U.S. attorney empanelled another grand jury to investigate Robert Angleton. It was able to hand down an indictment in sixteen days without subpoenaing Leggett or her records. Damaging Blow to Reporter's Privilege Although this scenario has played out between the media and law enforcement agencies many times before, Leggett's contempt citation and the Fifth Circuit's holding represent an especially damag- ing blow to the reporter's privilege be- cause the court held that the First Amendment did not apply to her case at all. Although the Fifth Circuit settled in dicta the issue of whether Leggett was a journalist and thus able to claim the re- porter's privilege, it held that the case did not turn on that question. Rather, the Fifth Circuit made the sweeping pro- nouncement in Leggett's case and an earlier reporter's privilege case that the Constitution does not offer any testimo- nial or material privilege for reporters in the context of a grand jury or even a criminal proceeding. The Fifth Circuit's recent decisions are in contrast with those of the U.S. Supreme Court, which held in Branzburg v. Hayes that bad-faith grand jury subpoenas intended to disrupt re- porters' relationships with their sources violate the First Amendment. In Leggett's case, the court overlooked at- tempts by law enforcement agencies to (Continued on page 15) First Amendment-Based Reporter's Privilege Under Siege ....I Ch e ci . ...,. .......................................................... a vie War, Wisom, and Freedom of the Press........... 3 DCMA and the FIs Defuamation Claims in -4. n;. Courtside.............................. ...

What Is HeinOnline?

HeinOnline is a subscription-based resource containing thousands of academic and legal journals from inception; complete coverage of government documents such as U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and much more. Documents are image-based, fully searchable PDFs with the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database. For more information, request a quote or trial for your organization below.



Short-term subscription options include 24 hours, 48 hours, or 1 week to HeinOnline.

Purchase Access

Contact us for annual subscription options:

Contact Us

Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?

Log In

profiles profiles most