Murder Trial Judge Takes on the Press p.

By: Mark Fitzgerald

Charges Detroit Free Press photographer with contempt for taking a picture of a witness outside the courthouse
A HEARING WAS scheduled Sept. 22 on a highly unusual contempt charge against a Detroit Free Press photographer who photographed a trial witness on a public street outside the courthouse.
Free Press photographer Richard Lee is the latest journalist to come under the wrath of Judge George Crockett III, who has had several bitter confrontations with the press while presiding over the highly charged trial of three white former police officers accused of beating Malice Green, a black man, to death.
Earlier in the trial, Crockett sentenced a Detroit News student reporting intern to jail for accidentally contacting a juror. That sentence ? which was to include having the intern sit in a "crook's box" at the trial while wearing prison garb ? is under appeal.
In the latest incident, Crockett cited photographer Lee and Free Press city editor Carole Leigh Hutton for contempt after a photograph of trial witness Byron Gibbs was published in the paper July 7.
Crockett had barred the pool still and video camera operators at the trial from photographing Gibbs. For reasons he has not disclosed, Gibbs asked that he not be photographed.
Lee, however, took the picture while Gibbs was walking outside the courthouse after testifying.
Free Press attorneys argue that Crockett's order did not extend beyond the courtroom and there is a general constitutional right to photograph people in public places.
Crockett, however, would not back off the contempt citation against the journalists.
"There is some concern as to whether the news media is [sic] more concerned with reporting news or making news to report. Hopefully, we'll resolve it one way or another," he said, according to an account in the News by Brenda Ingersoll and Ann Sweeney.
Free Press executive editor Heath J. Meriwether said the news coverage was appropriate in the trial, which is often compared with the Rodney King beating case in Los Angeles.
The trial "is one of the most important in recent Detroit history and it's crucial that people who can't be at the trial get the most comprehensive coverage possible. That's why we've provided such intense coverage in both words and pictures," Meriwether said in a Free Press story by Janet Wilson.
On July 9, the contempt case was transferred from Crockett to Recorder's Court Chief Judge Dalton Roberson ? who appeared to have considerable doubts about its legal merits.
"If [Gibbs] didn't want his picture in the paper, he should have worn a paper bag over his head," Roberson said at a preliminary hearing.
Roberson dismissed the contempt charge against Hutton, noting that she is not Lee's supervisor.
However, the judge seemed to ensure further controversy by ordering the Free Press to provide ? at least two weeks before the Sept. 22 hearing ? the name of the person who made the decision to publish the Gibbs photograph.
Meriwether said the newspaper was considering an appeal of that order.
"We don't think a show-cause hearing for contempt is appropriate to delve into our editorial process," Meriwether said.
On June 25, Crockett found intern Santiago Esparaza guilty of contempt of court after he telephoned a juror in the trial.
Esparaza was sentenced to five days in jail.
One day later, the Michigan Court of Appeals stayed his jailing until it could consider the case. The appeals court set no deadline for its action.
Esparaza, 23, testified that he telephoned the juror accidentally while he was working on a list of juror telephone numbers that would be used to gather comments after the verdict.
In comments to the News before the hearing, Esparaza said the telephone call was a "mental error."
"It was a mistake," he said in the unbylined story. "I wasn't even trying to call the juror on my own. I was working on way too many stories at one time and blew it. I made a mental error."
Esparaza, a communications major at Wayne State University in Detroit, has interned at the newspaper for the past three summers, beginning as a messenger and editorial assistant. This summer was his first as a reporting intern.
Esparaza made the call June 16 to one of the jurors chosen to decide the fate of two of the three Detroit police officers accused in the beating death Nov. 5 of Green. He never asked any questions and called back to apologize before notifying his editors, he testified.
In an unusual arrangement, two panels of jurors are seated side-by-side in the heavily secured courtroom. One is judging the case against two officers accused of second-degree murder, while the other is weighing charges of assault with intent to create bodily harm against the third police officer.
The juror reported the contact to Crockett's clerk, and the judge lambasted the News in his courtroom June 18.
"It was a reprehensible thing to have done," Crockett said, according to a story in the combined June 19 edition of the News and Free Press.
Crockett also spoke disparagingly about the News at a media access hearing that was mostly concerned with whether the cable television feed should be shut down during parts of the trial because of the unusual dual-jury arrangement.
Esparaza continues to work at the paper, said Mark Hass, assistant managing editor/news.
"He's still in working. He's in the newsroom, which is better than being in jail," Hass said.
In the decision stayed by the appeals court, Crockett ordered Esparaza to report to jail June 20 and to return to the trial the next day "in jail attire."
"And we're going to sit you in the crook box, one of the best seats in here, and you can see everything both from a reporter's point of view and a prisoner's point of view," Crockett said, according to the News-Free Press.
In a statement, News editor and publisher Bob Giles called Crockett's decision "a gross miscarriage of justice."
"As is apparent from his ruling, Judge Crockett was motivated by his stated dislike for Esparaza's employer, the Detroit News, and not by Esparaza's testimony, which established he was unaware of the order he was convicted of violating," Giles said.