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Small news site challenges El Paso court secrecy

By Mark Obbie

A news Web site in El Paso, Texas, is raising hell about the secrecy imposed by a federal judge and law enforcement officials in the courtroom phase of a long-running public-corruption investigation. The Newspaper Tree reported last Wednesday that it had renewed a battle that last May yielded an order by U.S. District Judge Frank Montalvo keeping most secrecy provisions in place in the case, including closed guilty-plea hearings and sealed dockets, pleadings, and transcripts. In that May decision -- prompted by a motion by a community activist, not by journalists -- Montalvo essentially made the case for the newsworthiness of the proceedings. After quoting a Texas Monthly column on the case's importance to El Paso, Montalvo noted that many of the 80 "persons of interest" named in the investigation as suspects or potential witnesses are "prominent community figures," including judges and other elected officials. Still, Montalvo wrote that witness protection and the FBI's need to maintain the element of surprise dictated his decision to conceal what normally is public. Montalvo wrote: Now that the independent Newspaper Tree has joined the fight, Montalvo has asked the government to weigh in by September 5. The newspaper deserves praise for supplementing its aggressive coverage of the case with a formal challenge to a court's extraordinary secrecy provisions. The dominant newspaper in town, the El Paso Times, also has covered the case extensively, but evidently has not seen fit to complain publicly about limits placed on its access. (Via Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press)

Full post as published by Lawbeat on August 10, 2008 (boomark / email).