C.  News Reporters Sanctioned

for Violating Post-Trial Gag Order

 

      In a most unusual development affecting press coverage of criminal cases, New Jersey courts have imposed and upheld sanctions against reporters who contacted jurors after the close of a celebrated murder trial, thus violating the trial judge’s order barring such contacts. 

      The trial of Rabbi Fred Neulander for the murder of his wife attracted intense media interest.  Among those covering the trial were four reporters from the Philadelphia Inquirer.  When the first trial resulted in a hung jury, Judge Linda Baxter issued an order that not only barred any press contact with members of the jury, but barred publication of the jurors’ names, even though they had been identified in open court.  The judge assured the jurors that they had a right to speak to the press if they wished, but urged them to contact her if any reporter approached them or initiated contact.

      The Philadelphia reporters challenged both parts of the order.  An expedited appeal resulted in a New Jersey Supreme Court judgment that Judge Baxter’s attempt to bar publication of the jurors’ names after the trial was unconstitutional.    Meanwhile, the reporters risked sanctions by contacting jurors after the trial, and were cited for contempt.

 

Guilty of Contempt

      Another trial judge found them guilty of contempt, and sentenced each to perform community service.  The New Jersey Court of Appeals sustained both this ruling and the sanction. The state supreme court announced that it would sustain both actions of the lower courts -- striking down the juror-naming provision, but upholding the no-contact rule.  Two justices dissented, arguing that both parts of the order abridged the reporters’ First Amendment rights.  State v. Neulander, 801 A.2d 255 (N.J. 2002).

      The no-contact order is as ominous as it is novel.  Trial judges feel a special responsibility to ensure both the privacy of former jurors and the fairness and integrity of the criminal process.  It is thus not unusual, and surely no infringement on press freedom, for a trial judge to assure jurors who are being discharged that they are under no duty to accept media interviews, and to offer the court’s help should they feel harassed or threatened by reporters. 

      Where a conviction is awaiting appeal, there may be special sensitivity and risk in media-juror contacts.  But in the Neulander case, a hung jury leaves as the only option a wholly new trial.  In this instance, the basis for insulating from press inquiries those who have served as jurors seems substantially attenuated, as two justices of the New Jersey Supreme Court forcefully argued in their dissents.

--Robert M. O’Neil