A Florida appeals court has issued a brief but pointed rebuke to a Palm Beach County judge who believed he was within his rights to order a newspaper to “unpublish” information it had legally obtained—a clear win for the First Amendment that came with a stylistic flourish.
I wrote for CJR back in early December about an order by Circuit Judge Jack Schramm Cox directing the Palm Beach Post to remove from its website transcripts of telephone recordings in which a jailhouse snitch—who was slated to testify in a series of trials—bragged about his ability to elicit confessions from fellow inmates. The transcripts, which a public defender put in a court file, were part of the public record when the Post obtained and published them.
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