Judge: Ventura newspaper can't print murder-case story

Here's a case out of Ventura County that raises some interesting 1st Amendment concerns. In a rare move, a judge there has ordered the Ventura County Star not to publish a story that revealed details of a search warrant in a murder case. Details from the Star:

A Ventura County Superior Court judge issued a gag order against The Star late Wednesday ordering the newspaper to halt the printing of an article about the case of a man being held for the slaying last year of a 6-year-old boy in Newbury Park.

The order, by Judge Kevin Riley, concerns details from a search warrant issued in the case against Calvin Sharp, who is accused of using a meat cleaver in August 2007 to kill 6-year-old Sev'n Molina and nearly kill the boy's mother, Sandra Ruiz, 33.

The Star was set to print information it had obtained from the warrant, including facts that the court had sealed.

The order raises constitutional issues that pit Sharp's rights to a fair trial against First Amendment rights.

"The court's order defies more than 80 years of constitutional protection," said David Giles, an attorney for E.W. Scripps Co., which owns The Star. "This is important information about which the public has a well-established right to know."

What was in the search warrant? "Those documents released included a few new details in the case, including that Ruiz had been stabbed and slashed more than 50 times as she tried to protect her son. A neighbor of Ruiz, Diane D. Cox, was also seriously injured when she was slashed in the face as she and another neighbor tried to stop the attack."

--Shelby Grad

Comments

[Allan]

Im sure this gag order will eventually be overturned by a higher court as restrictive "prior restraint" and first amendment violations, but lets think of the bigger picture, its time to start removing judges whose lower court decissions are often being overturned by higher courts, lets call it proffessional negligence, if say 10% of their arbitrary decissions are overturned then they are not in step with the law and need to be removed.

[Xiao]

this is outrageous for the courts to issue a gag order for the press to not release the contents of the search warrant. this denies the press their hard earned 1st amendment rights. Furthermore, the public deserves to learn about what happened to this boy and to greive with the family in this time of pain and suffering. I give my greatest sympathies to Sev'n's family and I wish them the best of luck for the times to come.