Legal News

More on Yale's Law and Media Program

Posted on March 26, 2008
Harold Koh, Yale's law dean, explained in an interview what is new about the Law and Media Program (and I thought more explanation was called for, given that the school's Greenhouse announcement described aspects of the program as longstanding and new)...

Freep's mayoral scandal gears up

Posted on March 25, 2008
The Detroit Free Press' months-long coverage of the financial and sex scandal involving Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick yields indictments. Does it yield anything surprising in the Freep's pages? Not really. But today's package is admirably complete, if nothing else, covering scads of angles with seemingly solid, careful coverage...

Journal vs. Keker: It's your fault!

Posted on March 24, 2008
A little over a week ago, I chided The Wall Street Journal for missing the impending guilty plea of Dickie Scruggs and wondered why the paper hadn't sought payback from Scruggs' defense counsel, John Keker. It took a while, but payback time it is, compliments of Dan Slater at the Journal's Law Blog...

Polygraphs get pedophile seal of approval

Posted on March 22, 2008
The Journal's Laurie Cohen takes an unusual tack in this story about increasingly common use of polygraph testing. The much-maligned lie detector, widely discredited as reliable courtroom evidence, is nonetheless a useful and trusted tool in post-conviction proceedings, Cohen reports...

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Portrait of a "tough broad"

Posted on March 20, 2008
Kevin Rector's profile of Toni Locy in American Journalism Review starts out slow and fairly generic-sounding. And then it kicks into gear, providing a genuine-sounding portrait of a classic courthouse reporter. Locy's the real deal, and her explanation in this story -- an implicit excuse -- for why she can't satisfy the legal hounds baying at her to cooperate rings true...

Cautious policy foiled by citizen journos

Posted on March 20, 2008
What good are policies against publishing the names of criminal suspects who've been arrested but not charged if the news organization that follows those standards in its main product is also publisher of a forum for citizens to post anything they please? That's the question that Minneapolis writer David Brauer explores thoughtfully and thoroughly in this reported piece on MinnPost...

The antidote to litigation spin

Posted on March 19, 2008
Could there be any plainer or more compelling argument for thorough legal reporting, and against litigation spin doctors, than this illustration from the Paul McCartney divorce case? As Kevin Sullivan writes in today's Post, Heather Mills asked that the judge not release his written findings...

Oral arguments as spectator sport

Posted on March 19, 2008
I love this story by the Post's Mary Beth Sheridan. Taking an ordinary assignment (do a color sidebar on the scene outside the Supreme Court during a high-profile argument), she focused not just on the shouting protesters, but also on the ordinary citizens who went to the Court yesterday to glimpse history being made...

Content analysis ranks our team low

Posted on March 18, 2008
The Project for Excellence in Journalism ranks reporting on courts and the legal system among the least covered domestic issues, occupying four-tenths of a percent of the annual newshole in all media last year. That doesn't ring true. I'd like to see how the researchers define terms, for starters...

Scruggs' switch catches Journal flat-footed

Posted on March 15, 2008
Is it payback time for the Journal against John Keker? If I were Paulo Prada or Ashby Jones, the Journal reporters whose bylines topped this front-pager on Friday, I would have felt one of two emotions yesterday: self-loathing or Keker-loathing. That's because the story -- a lengthy preview of the upcoming judicial-bribery trial of Mississippi trial-lawyer legend Dickie Scruggs, represented by equally legendary criminal defense lawyer John Keker -- was followed a few short hours later by Scruggs' guilty plea...

Questions for the Times on how it started

Posted on March 13, 2008
Kudos to the Times for agreeing to answer reader questions about its work on the Spitzer story. But, because the message board was overwhelmed with more than 200 postings (some with multiple questions) in the first seven hours, I can't get a word in edgewise over there...

Client 9's legal picture comes into focus

Posted on March 12, 2008
After a slow start on the legal angle in the Spitzer affair, the Times weighs in with this report by David Johnston and Stephen Labaton, plus an intimidatingly long list of 17 contributing bylines. Even though it's still focused almost exclusively on potential financial crimes, nearly ignoring any possible prostitution-related charges, it's a decent comeback...

Locy pressure eases, for now

Posted on March 12, 2008
A good-news update in the Toni Locy case: A D.C. Circuit panel has stayed the fines, which were to start accruing today. So now Locy and her lawyers have some breathing room to fight Judge Walton's punitive order. Also today, USA Today editor Ken Paulson published a measured but effective op-ed on the case, including links to the two Hatfill stories that Locy wrote -- neither of which was the anonymous smear jobs of the sort for which Hatfill is now suing the government.

Free Toni Locy

Posted on March 11, 2008
I'm one of those old-fashioned reporters who tries hard not to let personal biases creep into my work. I strive for a level of open-mindedness in my work that leaves readers (or students) in the dark about my own beliefs. But this time I'm going to cite the Tony Mauro Exception to Journalistic Neutrality (Tony calls it the Walter Cronkite Exception, but Walter's never personally counseled me on the need to make this exception, and Tony has)...

Law and Client 9: WSJ 1, NYT 0

Posted on March 11, 2008
The Times' big Eliot Spitzer scoop may cover the paper in political-journalism glory. But the Journal takes the prize in first-day coverage of the legal jeopardy that Spitzer may face. Considering that the New York governor's downfall all stems from decisions of whether to investigate criminal wrongdoing, it's curious that the Times let the competition walk away with this one...

"60 Minutes" drops the ball in wrongful conviction story

Posted on March 10, 2008
Shame on "60 Minutes," correspondent Bob Simon, and producers Robert C. Anderson and Casey Morgan for squandering a chance to tell an important story well. Their report last night on the case of Alton Logan was "60 Minutes" at its best (powerful on-camera interviews with all the key players) and at its worst (cheap emotion, lacking any intellectual engagement with the real issues)...

Yale's openness on display in two stories

Posted on March 10, 2008
Yale University makes news on two related fronts in this Yale Daily News story about the university's debate over the gossip site JuicyCampus.com (via How Appealing) and this NPR Morning Edition story on a fight over public access to Yale campus police records...

Spanish-language reporters see NY trial differently

Posted on March 08, 2008
The Times' Annie Correal examines a markedly different tone between English- and Spanish-language tabloids' coverage of a big New York trial, over the death of Nixzmary Brown. The 7-year-old's death elicits nothing but condemnation for her defendant-father, Cesar Rodriguez, from the Daily News and Post, while El Diario-La Prensa and by New York 1 Noticias, among others in the Latino media, are friendlier to defense claims that Brown's mother, Nixzaliz Santiago, is the culprit...

Contempt of cop story lives up to its name

Posted on March 07, 2008
The Post-Intelligencer's Eric Nalder, Lewis Kamb and Daniel Lathrop continued the paper's "Strong Arm of the Law" series on police misconduct with this story last week documenting racial disparities in "contempt-of-cop" arrests. That's shorthand for "obstructing a police officer" charges...

Duke's 19th Century media concept

Posted on March 06, 2008
If it weren't so offensive, Duke University's legal assault on a litigation opponent's PR strategy would be downright funny. But not funny ha ha. Funny sad.In this memorandum filed last week, Duke seeks a gag order against lawyers for the unindicted lacrosse players who announced their civil suit against the university in a well-publicized press conference in Washington last month...

True or false? Fake Bad Scale is voodoo science

Posted on March 05, 2008
On the same day that the Post's Frank Ahrens quoted an anonymous Wall Street Journal reporter as saying that he and his colleagues "have noted a change in the paper's front page toward more 'urgency' and away from the longer, off-the-news features that have been a trademark of the paper," the Murdoch-owned Journal featured a longer, off-the-news feature on an interesting law trend...

Law-free coverage of same-sex marriage arguments

Posted on March 04, 2008
On NPR's Morning Edition, I heard a story on today's upcoming California Supreme Court arguments (I'd provide a link, and quotes, but the story hasn't shown up on the Web site). It was routine coverage of the case, which tests the state's ban on same-sex marriage...

Telecom immunity: Follow the money?

Posted on March 02, 2008
Dan Eggen and Helen Nakashima provide a reasonably thorough and balanced account in today's Post of what the fight is about over immunity for telecommunications companies in the renewal of the law authorizing continued surveillance of terrorism suspects...

Echoes of Enron in banks' balance sheets

Posted on February 29, 2008
Floyd Norris shows why he's one of the most respected business writers around -- and lives up to a journalist's highest calling, to demand government accountability -- in his "High & Low Finance" column today. Considering the nature of his topic -- accounting rules on writing off bad bank investments -- Norris' writing is a model of plainspoken clarity...

Help wanted: Times SCOTUS search begins

Posted on February 28, 2008
Who will replace Linda Greenhouse? The 30-year veteran of the Supreme Court beat announced yesterday she's taking a buyout and leaving the Times at the end of the Court's term, which would mean in June. (In the delicious irony department, the news was broken by Greenhouse nemesis Ed Whelan at Bench Memos...

Immigration, buried in complexities

Posted on February 27, 2008
Ernesto Londono's front-pager in today's Post breaks new and important ground on the immigration-law beat. He documents the government's beefed-up efforts to track down and deport immigrants for their criminal convictions. Londono does a good job of looking at the issue from several angles -- the effects on criminal and immigration courts and lawyers, for example -- but in one key respect his story comes up short...

When a judge answers a reporter's call

Posted on February 25, 2008
One of the recurring themes in this course that my legal reporting program offers with Syracuse University's Institute for the Study of the Judiciary, Politics and the Media is on the relations between reporters and judges. Tony Mauro will be here next week to talk about that from his perspective as a veteran Supreme Court reporter...

Law meets tech in child-porn story

Posted on February 24, 2008
AP Internet writer Anick Jesdanun shows in this enterprising piece that reporters not on a law beat can be called on to produce stories requiring legal sophistication. Jesdanun catches the pass ad scores, serving up an interesting and clear explanation of the fallout from a Supreme Court ruling that struck down a law outlawing computer-generated images of child rape...

Liberal conspiracy? Or egregious shorthand?

Posted on February 19, 2008
David Rossmiller at the Insurance Coverage Law Blog slams the AP for this lede on a spot-news story this morning:The Supreme Court has refused to offer help to Hurricane Katrina victims who want their insurance companies to pay for flood damage to their homes and businesses...

Polk goes to TPM blogger Marshall

Posted on February 19, 2008
The prestigious George Polk Award for legal reporting goes this year to a blogger/reporter: Joshua Micah Marshall of Talking Points Memo, for his site's reporting on the U.S. attorneys scandal. The Polk Awards folks at Long Island University don't seem to have published their press release yet, which I read about in the Times...

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