Banner Graphic, Volume 20, Number 173, Greencastle, Putnam County, 28 March 1990 — Page 3

Court rules reporters who question grand jurors are not in contempt

;INDIANAPOLIS (AP) Two newspaper reporters can’t be held in; contempt of court for questioning former members of a grand jury two years after the jury was dismissal, a divided Indiana Supreme Court has ruled. In a 3-2 decision Tuesday in a caise watched closely by media groups, the high court threw out earlier state Court of Appeals decisions that said reporter Mark Kiesling of The Times of Hammond and William Heltzel, formerly a reporter at the paper, could be held in contempt because they violated the secrecy of the grand jury system. “WE’RE DELIGHTED.. We believe the right of the people to access of information has been upheld by the court,” said William Nangle, executive editor of the Hammond newspaper. “We’re absolutely delighted,” said Jan M. Carroll, who filed a friend-of-the court brief on behalf of a group of media organizations including the American Society of Newspaper Editors and the Society of Professional Journalists. “This case had far-reaching effects, not only for reporters but for any citizen who had the temerity to ask questions about a grand jury,” said Carroll. RICHARD GOOD, executive director of the Prosecuting Attorneys Council of Indiana, said the court’s decision could “put a chill on citizens coming forward with information” if the decision compromises the secrecy of the grand jury system. The contempt citations were sought by former Lake County Prosecutor Jack F. Crawford after The Times published stories in 1987 detailing why a grand jury impaneled in 1984 didn’t return indictments in an investigation of the North Township trustee’s office in that county. A LAKE COUNTY court had thrown out the contempt request before the Court of Appeals, in two 1989 decisions, ruled that the secrecy of the grand jury was “of paramount importance” and the

Confused Georgia drivers landing in jail with unrecorded 1990 plates

By The Associated Press Georgia drivers traveling out of state are running into trouble because of their new 1990 tags, and one official says it will be September before the problems end. Tax officials in the state reported at least 30 Georgia drivers were stopped in other states after the new license plate numbers were run through a national law-enforcement computer system that contained outdated records. “THESE PEOPLE ARE showing the 1990 registration we give them,” said Dallas Boone, a worker in the Richmond County Tax Commissioner’s office. “Officers run them through the national computer and what it’s bringing back are the 1983 to 1989 tags.” Lowndes County, Ga., Tax Commissioner Paul Sumner said a Valdosta couple stopped in Indiana were arrested after the tag didn’t register with the national computer.

Driver comes full-circle as bridge goes toll-free

CANNELTON, Ind. (AP) With a flip of a quarter on Friday, Bud Braun, Charles Gerber and William Waldschmidt will pay the final toll on the Bob Cuntmings Lincoln Trail Bridge. The three will have come fullcircle as they were the first to pay the toll on the bridge and they will be the last. The bridge, which spans the Ohio River to Hawesville, Ky., becomes a free bridge Friday at 2 p.m. “WHILE THEY WERE building the bridge, I got the idea to be in the first car to cross it,” Gerber said. The trio made up half the carload that paid the first toll on the bridge on Dec. 21,1966. Gerber said he’ll be paying that last quarter. “I’m saving a quarter to make sure I have enough for Friday,” he said. Two of the other businessmen in that first car now are dead, and a third is out of town and can’t make the ceremony, Gerber said. Having the men pay the last toll was the idea of the Perry County Chamber of Commerce, which found a photo of the first payment. THE 808 CUMMINGS Lin-

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JUSTICE DeBRULER Action not contempt

reporters could be punished for inducing jurors to violate that secrecy. The three-justice majority of the Supreme Court held that while the reporters’ actions weren’t protected by the freedom of the press guarantee in the First Amendment, they didn’t rise to the level of contempt because the questioning of the jurors occurred long after the jury had been dismissed. “THE REPORTERS’ questioning of grand jurors two years after the close of grand jury proceedings did not impede the administration of justice,” Justice Roger 0. DeBruler wrote for the court. ‘The reporters here have not been charged with criminal wrongdoing, and their actions were not contemptuous.” While making its ruling, the court declined to give a broad guideline on what is and what is not contemptuous behavior by reporters who question grand jurors or on how long the secrecy surrounding grand jury proceedings should be maintained. THE COURT SAID the Hammond reporters’ actions constituted unlawful news gathering activities not protected by the First Amendment. However, the reporters weren’t guilty of contempt because their actions came long after the

“The husband and wife spent the night in jail, and their children were sent to a foster home jail,” Sumner said. ASKED IF THE state could be held liable, Georgia Revenue Commissioner Collins said, “I don’t see how we could be. That’s an unreasonable law enforcement officer that would do something like that (jail somebody). I would think they would be more liable than we would be.” Primo Ruiz said it happened to him on March 19. Ruiz, 35, of Bloomfield, NJ., was driving his cousin’s 1977 Corvette through Glenridge, N.J., when he was stopped. After the routine license check, Ruiz was told the Georgia tag on the car was listed as belonging to a different car. The car was impounded and Ruiz was charged for towing and three days storage of the vehicle.

coin Trail Bridge is named for a late local newspaper editor who lobbied legislators to approve the steel span across the river, Waldschmidt said. Officials on both sides of the river hope free bridge travel now will increase tourist and shopper traffic. In recent years, Kentucky and Indiana officials discussed lifting the toll, which once cost 60 cents, and sharing the maintenance of the structure. However, Kentucky I officials wanted the bridge painted and rehabilitated a $3 million I job before they assumed their share of the cost. GOV. EVAN BAYH broke the deadlock when he instructed the state highway department to pay for the rehabilitation. Both states will take over maintenance when that work is completed, his office said. Waldschmidt said that he and other members of the first carload, after crossing the new bridge more than 23 years ago, returned on the last crossing of a ferry that stopped operating the same day.

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JUSTICE GIVAN A crime, but not contempt?

grand jury was dismissed, the court said. The court said the need to protect the secrecy of the grand jury is at its “peak while the grand jury is in the process of hearing testimony, deliberating and voting. Once the proceedings are over and the grand jurors have been discharged, however, the need to protect these policies falls off dramatically.” But the court said it couldn’t draw “an unequivocal line” designating when the concern for secrecy of the grand jury lapses. THE WIDE VARIETY of facts and circumstances which are the substance of grand jury proceedings suggests the line between what does or does not impede the administration of justice is uncertain and wavering and that courts must draw it as best they can on a case-by-case basis,” Deßruler wrote. The court took note of a U.S. Supreme Court decision last week striking down a Florida law permanently barring grand jury witnesses from talking about their testimony. However, the Indiana justices said that because their decision was focused narrowly on the issue of contempt, they didn’t have to address the larger issue of permanent bans on disclosure of grand jury information.

CLINT MOYE, director of the Motor Vehicle Division of the state Department of Revenue, said part of the problem is tags issued this year carry the same letters and numbers as tags issued between 1983 and 1989, and the department has not recorded the new tags in its computer system. “We have 6 million license plates issued in Georgia each year,”

“When you need help you’ll find our people to be friendly and professional.”

Dan L. Doan, Chairman and President

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JUSTICE PIVARNIK Disagreed with majority

JUSTICES Richard M. Givan and Alfred J. Pivamik disagreed with the majority opinion. Givan said he couldn’t understand how the court majority could concede “that what the reporters did in this case was a crime” and yet not hold them liable for comtempt. “Protecting First Amendment rights is always of paramount consideration. However, when members of the news media flagrantly commit a crime to gather news and, as in this case, deliberately mislead the former grand jurors in an endeavor to persuade them to consent to be interviewed, it is a wholly intolerable situation,” Givan wrote

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Valium snaps man out of 8-year-long vegetative state

MADISON, Wis. (AP) Eight years after an auto accident left him in a vegetative state, a man given a tranquilizer in a dentist’s office fell asleep, woke up and started to speak. Soon he could say his name, walk and feed himself, a doctor says. Dr. Andres Kanner, a neurologist with the University of Wisconsin Hospital, said Tuesday it’s a mystery why tranquilizers awakened the man. ‘T DON’T KNOW what it is,” Kanner said. “It was just luck he had to have some dental work and it was just luck they administered the drugs.” The patient, identified only as a Wisconsin man in his mid-40s, had been in a vegetative state, not a coma: His eyes were open and he occasionally uttered words, but he could do nothing else, the doctor said in an interview Tuesday. “His interaction with the environment was very limited. He rarely spoke one or two words,” Kanner said. THE PATIENT HAD been given Valium March 12 as a painkiller for routine dental work, Kanner said. After the tranquilizer was administered, the man fell asleep about five minutes, said Kanner, who was not present at the time. “Then he woke up and started talking. He was able to answer questions, say his name, to feed himself and walk,” Kanner said he was told.

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March 28,1990 THE BANNERGRAPHIC

Hours later, the man lapsed back into the vegetative state. He was given a second dose that brought him out of it for about 90 minutes. At that point he was able to recall parts of his life. “I HAVE TO TELL you he was a different man. He knew his name, the name of his family, where he used to work. He could add, subtract and perform complicated calculations,” said Kanner, who witnessed the second reaction. Since then, the man, who remains hospitalized, has received different, longer-lasting forms of benzodiazepines, a family of drugs that includes Valium, and barbiturates that allowed him to remain lucid 10 to 12 hours at a time, Kanner said. The drugs are administered intravenously. Doctors can’t tell why the drugs helped the man or what combination of drugs they can give him to take orally outside the hospital, he said. ONE THEORY IS that benzodiazepines, which inhibit certain functions of the nervous system, are blocking the effects of the vegetative state, Kanner said. But doctors for now are viewing the man’s case as an isolated one, he said. Kanner said the man suffers no medical problems other than his mysterious vegetative state. It developed about two years after he came out of a four-month coma brought on by a car accident 10 years ago.

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