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Gag order lifted in part

By David Oscar Markus

Judge Lenard held a hearing today on my motion in the Liberty City Seven case regarding the gag order that extended to acquitted defendant Lyglenson Lemorin, his lawyer Joel DeFabio, and DeFabio's agents (me).

On January 12, we filed a motion for clarification of her order, asking how far the gag order reached and who was covered. Then on January 24, Scott Srebnick and I filed a writ of mandamus with the Eleventh Circuit attacking the gag order.

Today, Judge Lenard clarified the earlier gag orders. Lemorin's wife is now free to speak. And all of us can speak about Lemorin's immigration case, so long as we don't touch on the facts of underlying criminal case. Query how we will do that since the immigration case is based on the same facts. We still cannot discuss the facts of the first trial that led to Lemorin's acquittal. Accordingly, we will proceed with our appeal in the 11th Circuit.

Judge Lenard indicated she will be writing an order to memorialize her oral findings today, which I will post.

What struck me most about the hearing was the Government's repeated discussion about trying to protect the rights of the six men still on trial. As Srebnick and I argued in court today, none of those charged men objected to Lemorin speaking to the press. Lemorin has been detained for almost 19 months since the Government issued a press release calling him an agent of al Qaeda who wanted to blow up buildings. He should be permitted to respond to those false allegations in the media to restore his reputation and to shine light on the allegations in his immigration case.

I generally do not blog about cases with which I'm involved, but this is an exception because the gag order affected the blog. So I feel that it's okay to discuss these issues here.

Here's an article from the DBR in today's paper setting out what had occurred up till today. They'll be a bunch more in the paper tomorrow, which I will post.

Full post as published by Southern District of Florida on January 28, 2008 (boomark / email).