TV News Tapes in Animal Lab Case Seized

San Bernardino County sheriff’s deputies investigating vandalism against an animal research laboratory of heart surgeon Dr. Leonard Bailey seized two videotapes Wednesday from the Riverside office of KCBS-TV’s news department.

A spokeswoman for the Los Angeles-based television station called the seizure, which included unbroadcast material, a “violation of our First Amendment rights.”

The station’s attorney said he believed that it was the first time such a seizure by law enforcement had taken place at any CBS television news operation.

Normally, law enforcement agencies file subpoenas in court when they want to obtain a news operation’s unpublished notes or unbroadcast materials to aid a criminal investigation. That results in a court hearing, during which the news outlet can argue its case before a judge.

However, the Sheriff’s Department convinced San Bernardino Superior Court Judge Michael Smith to sign a search warrant authorizing the seizure of the outtakes.

KCBS attorney Dennis Sullivan, who said the station’s lawyers will go to court today to have the tapes returned, maintained that California law exempts outtakes from being seized with a search warrant.

Broadcasters have long argued that raw footage should be equated with a reporter’s notes, which are usually protected under the state’s “shield” law.

San Bernardino County sheriff’s spokesman Jim Bryant said Wednesday’s seizure was “legal this way. No question.”

The search warrant was obtained by deputies investigating a raid Monday by a group calling itself the Animal Liberation Front, which vandalized a Loma Linda University Medical Center research lab.

Included in the seized materials was a tape given to KCBS at a news conference held by the group’s members after the raid. The footage included an interview with spokeswoman Margo Tannenbaum and exterior shots of the medical center, according to KCBS spokeswoman Sharon Baker.

The animal activists broke into the animal research lab of Bailey, the hospital’s famed infant heart transplant surgeon who, in 1984, performed the first baboon-to-human heart transplant.

The group said its raid was in protest of what it called “Frankenstein-like experiments.”

Authorities said the group took animals, scrawled graffiti on the laboratory walls, smashed TV sets and caused about $10,000 in damage.

KCBS’ Sullivan said the station’s attorneys drove to San Bernardino late Wednesday to file a motion in Smith’s court asking that the seized materials be returned, only to find that Smith had already left for the day.