By: E&P Staff A federal appeals court yesterday said that freelance journalist Josh Wolf's bail will be revoked unless he releases footage he shot of a 2005 protest rally in San Francisco to a grand jury, according to published reports.
One of Wolf's lawyers, Jose Luis Fuentes, was quoted by the San Francisco Chronicle as saying that Wolf will turn himself in at the federal prison in Dublin, Calif., before the 1:00 pm deadline tomorrow.
Wolf, who spent a month in prison earlier this year, has argued that, as a journalist, he has the right to withhold the footage. An appeals court last week, however, rejected his argument, and the same panel of three judges made the decision yesterday to revoke Wolf's bail and return him to prison.
Fuentes reportedly had wanted to keep Wolf free pending another appeal to the full Ninth Circuit appeals court in San Francisco. Wolf's lawyers may take the case to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Prosecutor Jeffrey Finigan, in his successful argument to revoke bail, said Wolf should be returned to prison because the "coercive intent behind the recalcitrant witness statute is lessened with each passing day."
The subpoena for Wolf's footage relates to an incident at the rally in which the anarchist demonstrators he was filming allegedly tried to burn a San Francisco police car. The rally was being held to oppose an economic summit in Scotland. During the protest, one city police officer was hit on the head and was treated for a fractured skull.
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