Bryant Trial Date Is Set; Fight Looms on Transcripts

A day after a court reporter in the Kobe Bryant sexual assault case accidentally released transcripts of a closed-door hearing to seven media organizations, the judge set Aug. 27 as the trial date.

Bryant is accused of sexually assaulting a woman in a Colorado hotel in June 2003. His lawyers say the sex was consensual.

The release of the transcripts Thursday prompted Judge Terry Ruckriegle to issue an order threatening contempt if the information was published and set the stage for a 1st Amendment confrontation between the Colorado judge and the media outlets. The organizations, which include the Los Angeles Times, plan to challenge the constitutionality of the order with the Colorado Supreme Court on Monday.

“There is a bright line between controlling access to information

The transcripts mix-up began Thursday afternoon, when the court reporter e-mailed 206 pages of transcripts from a two-day hearing, portions of which were closed, held earlier in the week. The closed portion dealt with whether certain evidence concerning the alleged victim’s sexual activity would be admissible at trial. The court reporter later wrote in another e-mail that the transcripts were sealed and that the organizations should delete them.

The court reporter later e-mailed the same organizations an unsigned order by the judge noting that the material was “erroneously distributed.”

“These transcripts are not for public dissemination,” Ruckriegle wrote in the order. “Anyone who has received these transcripts is ordered to delete and destroy any copies and not reveal any contents thereof, or be subject to contempt of court.”

Ruckriegle also called the Denver bureau of Associated Press after bureau chief George Garties phoned the court to check on the validity of the order since it had not been signed.

USC law professor Erwin Chemerinsky, who specializes in 1st Amendment issues, said the law is clear and favors the press.

“The court can certainly keep documents secret,” he said. “But once the court releases them, even by accident, and the press lawfully receives them, they can publish them.”

The media organizations that received the transcripts decided to challenge the judge’s order, rather than immediately publish the information.

Los Angeles Times Editor John Carroll said Friday that he believed the order was illegal but that he did not see a pressing public need to publish the material until the challenge to the order had gone through the courts.

“We weighed the value of publishing in defiance of a court order against the value of the material and decided to give the Colorado Supreme Court a chance to overturn the order rather than publish immediately,” he said.

Carroll added, “If this had been the Pentagon papers, we probably would have made a different decision.”

The Denver Post also decided not to publish the contents of the transcripts this week.

Managing Editor Gary Clark said he believed the judge’s order violated the 1st Amendment but that the newspaper decided to challenge the order before writing a story.

Clark said the decision was also based on the news value of the transcripts, which he said left some unanswered questions.

“While there was some very interesting testimony in the documents, it wasn’t completely clear,” Clark said. “Our readers might not understand fully what the documents were saying.”

A similar situation occurred last year, when the court posted on its website a document containing the name of the alleged victim. The posting came after the court had ordered the media not to publish her name.