Paper’s legal attempt on story stalls

The Ventura County Star was rebuffed Thursday in its efforts to quickly overturn a judge’s order to withhold publication of a story that details the slashing death of a 6-year-old boy last year.

Legal experts and the newspaper’s editor said the ruling earlier this week by Superior Court Judge Ken Riley is a clear violation of 1st Amendment protections.

But Riley, who was out of town, declined to hold an immediate hearing and set one for Monday.

Until then, the ban on publishing information that the Star legally obtained from arrest warrants will remain in place, said Joe Howry, the Star’s editor. “The Supreme Court of the United States has ruled time and again that no branch of government, including the judiciary, has a right to prior restraint of the publication of information, except in extreme situations such as war,” he said.

Erwin Chemerinsky, a constitutional law scholar and dean of the UC Irvine law school, agreed with the editor’s assessment.

The media’s right to print information they have legally obtained is solidly established in law, Chemerinsky said. Riley’s ruling is further weakened because a local news radio station, KVTA-AM (1520), had broadcast a story based on the information in the same warrants a week earlier.

“How can you make a claim for secrecy for something that’s already been published?” Chemerinsky said. “What the press legally obtains it can truthfully report.”

But attorneys for Calvin Sharp, the defendant in the murder case, said Riley acted appropriately. The Star appealed a decision last year to seal the warrants, and as a party to that suit it must abide by all court orders, said Steve Lipson, Ventura County’s assistant public defender.

The article the Star planned to publish Thursday contained information from unedited versions of the warrant, which was mistakenly released by a court clerk, Lipson said. That information, he said, would prejudice the defendant’s right to a fair trial.

“You’ve got certain responsibilities as a litigant,” he said. “And one is to not directly violate a court order.”

Sharp, 29, faces trial on charges that he used a meat cleaver to kill 6-year-old Sev’n Molina in August 2007. During the attack, witnessed by several neighbors, Sharp allegedly swung the cleaver at the boy’s mother, Sandra Ruiz, over 50 times as she bent to protect her son, nearly killing her.

Information in the warrants contains details about what authorities were looking for when they searched Sharp’s motel room and van after the attack. Rich Gualano, news director at KVTA, said the station broadcast a report based on information in the warrants on Dec. 4.

Gualano said he was reluctant to detail what the warrants contained because of Riley’s order. But he said the information added little more than detail to what is already publicly known about the case.

Riley has been a judge in Ventura County’s criminal courts for 20 years. He was previously a prosecutor in the Ventura County district attorney’s office.

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catherine.saillant@latimes.com