A.  Journalist Serves Record Time

for Protecting Confidential Sources

 

      When the U.S. Supreme Court, in April 2002, refused to review the case of imprisoned journalist Vanessa Leggett, it ended the legal phase of one of the sorriest chapters in the eternal tension between the news media and the courts.  Ms. Leggett, a freelance reporter and lecturer at the University of Houston, had undertaken an intensive investigation of the 1997 slaying of the wife of a millionaire bookie, Robert Angleton.  She envisioned writing a book about a high-profile case, and had in fact had preliminary conversations with at least one magazine editor about a possible serialization of her work. 

      Though Mr. Angleton was eventually cleared of state court charges, his case soon attracted intense interest from federal prosecutors and a federal grand jury.  By that time, one of the key witnesses to the crime had died, and Ms. Leggett’s notes apparently contained what might well be the only record of the witness’s knowledge and insight.

      At first Ms. Leggett agreed to cooperate with Houston-based FBI agents, having been assured that no demand would be made that she disclose the identify of certain sources to whom she had promised anonymity.  But the scope of the agents’ demand soon expanded dramatically, to encompass Ms. Leggett’s entire research archive.  At this point, fearful of the consequences of so broad a disclosure, and believing that a journalist had a right as well as duty to withhold such information, she refused to surrender her materials to federal officers.

 

Record Jail Time

      Ms. Leggett was then cited for contempt by a federal district judge, who ruled that she enjoyed no privilege of any sort and was legally obligated to disclose information that might be relevant to a criminal case.  She unsuccessfully sought review in the federal court of appeals.  She then served 168 days in jail -- the longest known sentence ever imposed on a journalist for refusing to reveal information or sources.  Indeed, Ms. Leggett was released from jail only upon the expiration of the term of the grand jury that had demanded the materials.  Several months after her release, her petition for review was rejected by the Supreme Court without comment.  Leggett v. United States, petition for cert. denied, 535 U.S. 1011 (2002).

      The handling of Ms. Leggett’s case was especially troubling in light of significant limits that the Justice Department has imposed upon itself for just such situations.  In the anxious period after Watergate, President Ford’s attorney general, Edward Levi, issued a strongly protective set of guidelines that sharply curtailed the authority to demand sensitive information from journalists, and insisted that no subpoena could be issued without the attorney general’s personal review and approval. 

      Not only was there widespread media appreciation at the time of so sensitive a policy; over time, the Levi guidelines seem to have been faithfully and consistently applied by attorneys general of both parties, until events within recent months.  The Leggett case represents the most serious and ominous departure ever from the guidelines, and seems also to have been a relatively isolated event, even in the perilous times after Sept. 11, 2001.

      The Leggett case, and the interminable period of incarceration, may reflect one other factor.  Months later, Ms. Leggett was asked whether she felt she may have been “more vulnerable to this kind of prosecution because you have no ties to a media organization.”  “I think,” she replied, “that’s precisely why I’ve been treated this way.”  She added that “this murder story had been covered by numerous people from various media [but] I am the only one who has been subpoenaed.”  Whether she would have been better treated had she been a recognized media employee on assignment, one can only speculate.  All that is clear is that no working journalist has been, or likely could have been, treated worse in recent times than Vanessa Leggett.

 

--Robert M. O’Neil