The New York State Supreme Court sided with a Fox
News journalist, Jana Winter, and ruled that the reporter does not have to
reveal her sources to Colorado authorities trying James Holmes for his July
2012 rampage at a theater in Aurora.
New York state law is more protective of
professional journalists than is Colorado, but here there seems to be a “Full
Faith and Credit” issue, as to whether another state could use its own laws to
force an out of state journalist to disclose sources inside the state.
The Fox version of the story, involving drawings
that Holmes had shared with a university psychiatrist about his destructive
fantasies, is here.
An “amateur” blogger in New York would not have been
protected by the ruling.
It seems that there is a real issue here, in that a
state in Colorado’s position needs extreme deference from the (other states’) courts
in subpoenas for critical evidence in murder or death penalty cases, to prevent
any possibility of wrongful conviction, a subject I have covered on my movies
and TV blogs lately.
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