Judge Drops Complaint Against Lawyer

A Municipal Court judge has dismissed a contempt complaint against an attorney accused of leaking confidential information about Long Beach Police Officer Mark Dickey, who is facing criminal charges stemming from his arrest of anti-brutality activist Don Jackson.

Judge Gary R. Hahn dismissed the contempt case against one of Jackson’s attorneys, Thomas E. Beck, who had been accused of improperly giving a Press-Telegram reporter information about two brutality complaints involving Dickey. The information was contained in Police Department files made available to Beck for his defense of Jackson on a resisting arrest charge.

Although that charge was dropped by the city prosecutor’s office just as the case was about to go to trial, the city attorney’s office asked the judge to hold Beck in contempt for allegedly releasing details of two previous brutality allegations involving Dickey, who was cleared by the department in both incidents.

Beck maintained that the parties who filed the brutality complaints had given the information to the reporter, but in the end Hahn dismissed the contempt complaint for legal reasons.

Invoking the state shield law, which protects reporters from having to reveal unpublished information about their sources, Press-Telegram reporter Bob Zeller refused to answer certain questions during the contempt hearing. Judge Hahn, concluding that Zeller’s silence prevented Beck from exercising his rights of cross examination, struck the reporter’s testimony and dismissed the contempt case.