http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/07/18/BAGTVK0N871.DTL&hw=contempt&sn=001&sc=1000

San Francisco Chronicle
Tuesday, July 18, 2006
SAN FRANCISCO
Contempt case over rally video
- Bob Egelko, Chronicle Staff Writer

A federal judge has ordered a freelance journalist to
surrender video footage of a July 2005 clash between
San Francisco police and anarchist demonstrators or
face jail for contempt of court.

The journalist, Josh Wolf, said Monday he would refuse
to turn over the tapes, even if U.S. District Judge
William Alsup rejects his legal defense at a hearing
Thursday.

"I am prepared to go to jail,'' said Wolf, 24. He said
that his tapes don't show the event federal
prosecutors say they are investigating -- the alleged
vandalism of a police car -- and that yielding the
videos would turn him into "a surveillance camera for
the government.''

Wolf's lawyer, Jose Luis Fuentes, said Wolf could be
jailed for as long as a year, the possible duration of
the federal grand jury investigating the incident.

The case arises against a backdrop of the federal
government increasingly seeking to require journalists
to disclose confidential sources and unpublished
material.

New York Times reporter Judith Miller, one of several
reporters targeted by a special prosecutor, was jailed
for 85 days last year for refusing to identify the
source of her information that Valerie Wilson, the
wife of Bush administration critic Joseph Wilson, was
a CIA agent.

A federal judge has scheduled a hearing Aug. 4 to
determine whether Chronicle reporters Mark
Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams should be ordered to
reveal their sources of testimony by Barry Bonds and
other athletes before a grand jury investigating a
laboratory's illicit distribution of steroids. The
reporters could be held in contempt and jailed if they
refuse to testify.

Fuentes said he would ask Alsup to transfer Wolf's
case to U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White, who is
hearing the case of the Chronicle reporters. The
lawyer said the two cases should be considered
together because they raise the same issue: whether
federal law provides any implicit protection for
journalists who withhold confidential information from
grand juries.

Wolf's case arises from a protest July 8, 2005, in the
Mission District against an international economic
summit in Scotland. As officers pursued a band of
anarchists, a San Francisco police car was allegedly
set on fire.

Federal prosecutors have said in court filings that
the vandalism could be a federal crime because the
Police Department receives federal funds. Federal law,
unlike California law, contains no explicit
protections for reporters who refuse to reveal
confidential sources or unpublished material.

Part of Wolf's video of the demonstration was shown on
local television. Prosecutors have been seeking the
rest of the footage since February.

Alsup first ordered Wolf to produce the material June
15, after a closed-door hearing. According to a
transcript that Alsup later made public, the judge
told Wolf he had no basis for withholding the tapes,
and cited Miller's case.

Wolf appeared before the grand jury later that day,
declared that he had a constitutional right to remain
silent and to discuss the jury's questions with his
lawyers, and was abruptly excused from the hearing by
a prosecutor without explanation, according to Wolf's
attorneys.

But prosecutors returned to Alsup three weeks later
with a request to hold Wolf in contempt of court. The
judge signed an order July 10 telling Wolf that,
unless he justified his refusal to comply with the
demand for the tapes, he would be held in civil
contempt for the rest of the grand jury's term.

Fuentes said the grand jury investigating the
demonstration convened in January and could remain in
operation through next July.

The lawyer said he would assert a variety of defenses
for Wolf, including a claim that he had the right to
remain silent to avoid possible self-incrimination.
Fuentes declined to explain how Wolf could incriminate
himself, but said he would provide a written
explanation to Alsup under seal.

If Alsup upholds Wolf's self-incrimination claim, a
claim he rejected in the earlier hearing, the
government could grant Wolf immunity from prosecution
and ask the judge to order him to testify.

E-mail Bob Egelko at  begelko@sfchronicle.com.

Page B - 1
©2006 San Francisco Chronicle

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National Lawyers Guild Condemns Attack on Free Press
Friday Jul 14th, 2006 10:04 PM

The US Attorney’s Office, led by Assistant US Attorney Jeffrey Finigan,
are attempting to force Wolf to testify before the grand jury and hand
over a video tape of a protest that occurred in San Francisco’s Mission
District last July.
For Immediate Release July 13, 2006
National Lawyers Guild Condemns Attack on Free Press

San Francisco video journalist Josh Wolf is being charged with civil
contempt for exercising his first amendment right and refusing to
provide a federal grand jury with video footage he shot at a protest
last summer. The Guild believes that the grand jury is being improperly
used to obtain materials which would normally be protected under
California’s Reporter Shield Law. *The civil contempt hearing is
scheduled for July 20th at 1 p.m. before Judge William Alsup and the
National Lawyers Guild (NLG) will host a press conference at noon in
front of the Federal Building—450 Golden Gate in San Francisco on that
day. *

The US Attorney’s Office, led by Assistant US Attorney Jeffrey Finigan,
are attempting to force Wolf to testify before the grand jury and hand
over a video tape of a protest that occurred in San Francisco’s Mission
District last July.

“My client’s political activity and free speech activity in the Bay Area
as a journalist and this subpoena, with its associated threat of jail
time for noncompliance, has an incredible chilling effect on his and
other journalist’s freedom to gather and disseminate information of
groups who espouse dissident beliefs,” said Attorney Jose Luis Fuentes,
of the Oakland based Siegel & Yee firm, who is representing Wolf on
behalf of the National Lawyers Guild.

The use of federal grand juries to target journalists and political
activists who are critical of the repressive domestic and international
policies of the United States government is an attack on democratic free
speech activity. The implications of Josh Wolf’s case go well beyond a
single journalist or protest. “Like the Judith Miller case or the BALCO
case this is about the government’s ability to take an independent and
free press and treat it as an investigatory arm of the government,” said
Carlos Villarreal, Executive Director of the National Lawyers Guild San
Francisco Bay Area. “The people of California have made it clear through
our shield law that we prefer a free press that doesn’t have the
government constantly looking over its shoulder.”

California’s shield law, according to a recent court decision on the
matter, “is intended to protect the gathering and dissemination of
news.” In that decision, the California Court of Appeals in San Jose
confirmed that the law protected internet bloggers just as it protected
corporate news reporters. Federal protections are not as strong.

“People protesting or on strike for better wages or marching for amnesty
should feel free to do so in front of journalist’s cameras, just as they
should feel free to talk to journalists,” said Wolf. “A free press
benefits all of us,” he said.

Court documents and past news articles can be found at
 http://joshwolf.net/grandjury/