Tuesday, September 19, 2006

SF Chronicle: Bail revoked for journalist in contempt case

Bail revoked for journalist in contempt case
Freelance journalist and activist Josh Wolf is heading back to jail after a federal appeals court on Monday ordered his bail revoked unless he changes course and gives a federal grand jury outtakes of footage he shot at a violent San Francisco protest in July 2005.
Wolf, who has argued that he has a right as a journalist to withhold unpublished material, plans to turn himself in at the federal prison in Dublin before a 1 p.m. Wednesday deadline, said Jose Luis Fuentes, one of Wolf's attorneys.
A three-judge panel of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last week rejected Wolf's appeal of a lower court's decision to hold him in contempt. The same three judges on Monday granted a federal prosecutor's motion to revoke bail.
Attorneys for Wolf, who has already spent a month behind bars, had hoped to keep their client free while he appeals the case. They plan next month to ask the full Ninth Circuit appeals court, based in San Francisco, to review the case and may also take the case to the U.S. Supreme Court.
In his argument for revoking bail, prosecutor Jeffrey Finigan wrote that Wolf must be jailed because the "coercive intent behind the recalcitrant witness statute is lessened with each passing day."
Fuentes said jailing his client will not be coercive because Wolf hopes to achieve victory through his appeals. "It's just punishment," Fuentes said.
The subpoena for Wolf's footage was issued by a grand jury investigating the alleged attempted burning of a San Francisco police car at an anarchist-led rally July 8, 2005, in opposition to an economic summit taking place at the time in Scotland.
A police officer was hit on the head during the protest and suffered a fractured skull. The grand jury is investigating the police car incident, which prosecutors say would be a federal crime because the Police Department receives money from Washington.
E-mail Demian Bulwa at dbulwa@sfchronicle.com.

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