Reporter Appeals Unusual, Potentially Ruinous Contempt Fine
A former reporter for USA Today has filed an emergency appeal over what is being described as an unprecedented—and, press advocates say, overbroad—contempt-of-court fine that she must pay personally.
Toni Locy appealed today to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit a ruling by U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton, who sits in Washington, D.C. It requires that she personally pay up to $5,000 a day in contempt fines, prior to an April 3 court hearing, unless she reveals her sources for controversial articles about 2001 anthrax attacks, according to Associated Press articles published today and Saturday. The judge declined her request to stay the fine, pending an appeal.
Mark Feldstein, a journalism professor at George Washington University, calls the judge’s approach “deeply disturbing,” as well as highly unusual. “I think this is unprecedented in terms of it being applied to a journalist,” he tells the Wall Street Journal Law Blog. “It’s mostly used in mob cases when the court doesn’t want some larger organized crime structure to pay for a fine.”
Steven Hatfill, a former Army scientist who at one point reportedly was considered a person of interest in the attacks, has brought an invasion-of-privacy suit against the government over leaks that resulted in the articles about him. As part of that effort, he is subpoenaing Locy and several other reporters in an attempt to find out exactly who was responsible for the leaks.
Unless she reveals her sources, Locy, who is now a West Virginia University journalism professor reportedly earning about $75,000 a year, will be fined $500 a day for one week, starting tomorrow; $1,000 a day the second week; and $5,000 a day from that point on, until the April 3 hearing.
“I don’t like to hold anyone in contempt,” says Walton, according to an earlier USA Today article. “I fully appreciate the importance of a free press. On the other hand, the media has to be responsible.”
But Lucy Dalglish of the Reporters Committee for the Freedom of the Press says Walton’s unusual approach is arguably even worse than the traditional punishment of being sent to jail for contempt for refusing to reveal one’s sources. “What he’s doing is essentially saying, ‘Toni Locy, I am going to destroy your life.’ “
