St. Louis lawmaker seeks to create crime of ‘malicious prosecution of a journalist’

A St. Louis lawmaker wants to create the crime of “malicious prosecution of a journalist,” a class E felony punishable by up to four years in prison.

Rep. Peter Merideth, D-St. Louis, said he was inspired to file the legislation last week after Gov. Mike Parson, a Republican, in October announced a criminal investigation into the St. Louis Post-Dispatch when one of the newspaper’s journalists alerted the state to a significant data vulnerability that exposed educators’ Social Security numbers to public disclosure.

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