Imprisoned Vid-Blogger Josh Wolf Denied Request For Hearing, Bail

[meegbear]

Freelance journalist, videographer and blogger Josh Wolf was denied a request for a rehearing yesterday by a federal court of appeal, and refused to accept any more filings in the case. This means that Wolf, 24, could be kept in prison until the expiration of the grand jury in July. Wolf, who was jailed for refusing to turn over raw footage shot at a protest in San Francisco in July 2005 and testify about its contents, has already served 88 days in jail. Wolf was subpoenaed by federal prosecutors investigating charges of vandalism at the event.

Wolf was sentenced and imprisoned in August, was released on bail in September, and then was sent back to jail when his bail was revoked by a panel of the Ninth Circuit Court. A hearing by the full court was requested by his lawyer, which is the request denied yesterday. The motion to reinstate bail was "denied as moot." Thank goodness the courts are protecting society from this very, very dangerous 24 year old kid.

Wolf's lawyer has offered the court the full tape in exchange for release from testimony, but the US Attorney's Office for the Northern District of California has said no dice. And it's prison for you, Josh Wolf, until you reconsider your silly little shield law. Civil litigation attorney and former public defender Stephen Kaus has been following the case on HuffPo, and noted "(w)hatever powers the government should have in the face of a legitimate terror threat, that is not what is happening here." Kaus also notes that Wolf 's case has come before a Federal court rather than a state court, before which he would be protected by California's shield law. As we learned in the case of Judith Miller (a Josh Wolf advocate), there is no federal shield law for journalists. Kaus explains why Wolf's case is particularly outrageous:

In Wolf's case, the court required him to make the difficult showing that the investigation was undertaken in bad faith and then held that he had not done so. This is a far cry from balancing the importance of the evidence against the harm being done to the role of the press.

The fact is that the effectiveness of the press is substantially diminished if every reporter is turned into a "surveillance camera" as Wolf has claimed. Perhaps with exceptions for genuinely "terrible" situations, the press cannot function if each crime related story could turn into days of court testimony. The law in California that all involved on the government side have chosen to flout is designed to protect this press function.

<snip>

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eat-the-press/2006/11/17/imprisoned-vidblogger-jo_e_34325.html

----

Meanwhile, Chemical Chad walks free :grr:

[pinerow]

1. Yep...the real threat, Chemical Chad, is still on the street...

:wtf:

[Gregorian]

2. Rosa Parks.

Good for him. And it won't be long before sanity is returned.


I'm not sure what to make of the Chad guy. After all he did not mail poisons. However, justice skewed way off the graph. I just don't see how they can do much about someone who mails a benign powder, even though it's horrendous when put in perspective with the letters and all. I don't know. It doesn't mate up with the zero tolerance draconian attitude they ordinarily have, though.

[PetraPooh]

3. I imagine I'm going to catch some slack for this, but...

How is being a blogger the same as being part of "the press?" I think it has come to the point where we will need some semblence of concrete "membership" of some sort to truly define a reporter from a person who expounds a lot on the web.

Also, more for you to get annoyed with me, if he has evidence and testimony regarding vandalism, I would think that any honorable person would be cooperative. Those individuals whom he taped were not "sources" or in "confidence," were they really?

[thingfisher]

4. A valid distinction perhaps...

"...was jailed for refusing to turn over raw footage shot at a protest in San Francisco in July 2005..."
This I think is the crux of the whole matter. Whether this guy is entitled to be regarded as part of the "press" or not he is a private citizen who filmed a protest demonstration and may feel that his footage will be used to target other citizens, who were exercizing their rights, for harassment. Many peaceful demonstrations have been ruined by agents provocateurs (as happened in Seattle most famously), if the authorities feel the need to prosecute violent participants, let them do their own surveillence and not demonize private citizens for wanting to keep their own footage for themselves.

[Demit]

5. I'll cut you some slack so that you won't catch any flak. :)