Keith Merryman

While Baltimore City Solicitor George A. Nilson and Steven Kupferberg, the attorney for mistakenly arrested violinist Yakov Shapiro, still differ as to the origin of the confidentiality of their settlement, allow me to offer a few updates related to the case.

There’s been a strong reader reaction to the story of Shapiro’s travail — which started when a detective investigating claims of child molestation by Yisroel Shapiro posted a warrant for Yakov Shapiro — and the city’s efforts to keep it quiet. While many Baltimore elected officials have kept to themselves about the questions the case raises about government transparency and training at the police department, a few city council members have spoken up:

• Baltimore City Councilwoman Belinda Conaway, who has taken an interest in the costs of police negligence, said last summer she understood the need for such a confidential settlement “under extraordinary circumstances, once in a blue moon.” But, she said, “this should not happen again anytime soon.” Last week, after finally hearing the details of the Shapiro case, her first reaction was “Oh my God.”

“It’s a terrible, terrible thing to happen and I would hope the necessary steps are taken so something like this doesn’t happen again,” she said. “A settlement is nice but there’s no way that that settlement can undo the damage that was done.”

• Conaway’s colleague to the North, Bill Henry,  who had his own bout with transparency earlier this year, suggested a policy change. (City Councilwoman Mary Pat Clarke had the same idea this summer when asked about the settlement of the Shapiro case, which was then still shrouded in secrecy.)

“If we could all walk away from this with one lesson learned, I would hope that it would be a shared recognition of the importance of transparency in government proceedings,” Henry wrote in an e-mail Wednesday evening. “Perhaps the Board of Estimates needs to develop a better policy of how to deal with confidentiality concerns when allocating City funds. Perhaps we should be trying to record and broadcast not only the actual Board of Estimates proceedings, but the mini-meetings ahead of time when more detailed briefings are given for many of the issues before the Board.

“The Administration has claimed to be supportive of this initiative of the Council President’s (recording and broadcasting B/E meetings, Liquor Board hearings, and BMZA hearings),” Henry continued, “but also claims to be unable to come up with the operating funds needed – less than $50K – leading to the reasonable suspicion that they must be sufficiently comfortable with the status quo.”

Mr. Kupferberg has shielded Yakov Shapiro from press inquiries but he described his client’s reaction to the stories published in yesterday’s paper.

“Yakov was in here today, and I asked him if he wanted to speak to you and he started to cry,” Kupferberg said by phone from his office. “I showed him the story, and he just teared up.”

One detail I wasn’t able to determine before we published Tuesday evening was the identity of the judge who presided over Shapiro’s bail review that November morning three years ago. Well, it seems the voice on the recording was that of C. Yvonne Holt-Stone. According to an e-mail from Baltimore City District Court Administrative Judge John R. Hargrove Jr., Judge Holt-Stone was on the schedule for that morning at Central Booking, where Hargrove says Shapiro’s bail review took place. Holt-Stone, who has been on the city district court bench since 1991 is on leave through the end of the year and could not be reached to confirm her part in the case.

The other person I’ve yet to hear from is Baltimore City Police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III. He was at the White House yesterday and is out of the office through Christmas, according to his spokesman.

I’m less optimistic about ever hearing from Detective Keith Merryman (who posted the warrant for Yakov Shapiro instead of the real offender, Yisroel Shapiro) or police lawyer Neal M. Janey Jr., who negotiated the settlement, but stay tuned on those fronts.

Artist's court sketch of Yisroel Shapiro (left, with glasses and Kippah)

Finally, if you’re interested in learning more about Yisroel Shapiro and how his misdeeds came to light in the generally close-knit and tight-lipped Orthodox Jewish community, have a look at Standing Silent, a documentary that will premier at the Atlanta Jewish Film Festival in February. Phil Jacobs, the executive editor of the Baltimore Jewish Times who has covered the topic extensively, stars in the film.

Thanks for reading and Happy Holidays!

I’ll be speaking with some college journalists at my alma mater tonight and next week about social media, but I’m also going to offer this pearl of wisdom: Don’t drink – even a sip – if you’re scheduled to see the university president and governor at a football game.

Just ask Daniel Burnett, editor-in-chief of the University of Georgia’s student newspaper. He was asked to leave the president’s box during Saturday night’s game against Georgia Tech and resigned Monday from his post at The Red And Black.

An assistant to Georgia’s president said Burnett’s behavior was “disruptive enough to the point” he was escorted out. Guests in the box included the governor and governor-elect of Georgia.

Burnett, 22, said he had been drinking at a tailgate prior to entering the president’s box. He said he did not think he was being disruptive but university officials also had the right to remove him.

Read the rest of this entry »

I blogged last month about The Las Vegas Review-Journal’s “copyright enforcement partner,” who sues websites and bloggers that post the newspaper’s stories in their entirety, rather than just the links.

The Review-Journal’s strategy raised a whole bunch of legal questions. Now, it might raise some ethical questions because of one of its newest defendants: Republican U.S. Senate candidate Sharron Angle, who is challenging Democrat and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in one of the most hotly-contested and closely-watched elections of the fall.

Vegas-based blogger Steve Friess raised the ethical questions last week:

- [M]ust Nevada’s largest paper now include a passage in every news story it does on Angle’s race against Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid acknowledging that its owners have sued her?

- Can the R-J, whose publisher and editor have been outspoken supporters of the Tea Party darling, actually endorse her for Senate after having publicly accused her of stealing from them?

The Review-Journal alleges Angle posted two stories on her website without the newspaper’s permission. As of Tuesday, her website only had a paragraph from a story followed by a link, but that wasn’t always the case, as Friess has documented.

“[T]he Review-Journal has placed itself in journalistically uncharted territory,” Friess wrote Saturday. “No political or media experts I contacted could recall a mainstream newspaper ever suing a major-party candidate in the heat of a hotly contested election campaign.”

Something to watch as the general election nears.

(Speaking of elections, did you, Maryland Voter, cast your ballot in today’s primary election? You’ve got until 8 p.m.)

Longtime Cleveland Plain Dealer classical music critic Don Rosenberg last week lost his lawsuit against the paper and the Cleveland Orchestra, which he alleged forced him out of his position because of negative reviews in 2008. (Rosenberg has been re-assigned on the paper’s staff.)

Many in the classical music world have already weighed in. But I thought the best takes were those that spoke of the larger issue at play here: the role of the arts and the arts critic in society. It’s something Glenn Beck has discussed in recent weeks, taking Baltimore to task for maintaining funding levels on the Lyric despite all of its budget woes.

Martin Bernheimer, a Pulitzer Prize-winning critic, wrote in the Financial Times that Rosenberg’s case is an “alarming sign of the times”:

As government cuts of arts subsidies start to bite all over Europe, especially in Britain, there is talk of relying on “the American model.” That means an increased reliance on individual contributions – which goes along with an acceptance, presumably, of the individual powers that accompany substantial donations. Where does critical independence fit into this?

Chicago Tribune movie critic Michael Phillips wrote it’s a healthy sign when the triangular relationship between critic, newspaper and art community gets “sticky.”

There is so much fear and self-censorship in the critics’ ranks in America today. There are so few full-time salaries. You can smell the caution and paranoia in too many reviews weighed down by generalities and a stenographer’s devotion to “objectivity,” which isn’t what this endeavor is about at all. It’s about informed, vividly argued subjectivity.

Phillips also responded to Beck:

Criticism is a way of writing about life, and the world, and a symphony’s place in it, or a performer’s, or a photograph’s. …[N]o matter how frightening the economy, we must remind ourselves that we demonize the humanities… at the risk of becoming a nation we don’t want to become.

If I had a time machine, one of my first stops would be newsrooms across the country in the mid-1990s. (My second stop? Where Hall met Oates, of course.)

“This ‘Internet thing’? Not only is it here to stay but it is the future of information sharing,” I’d tell the assembled newspaper people. “Start charging people for your online content now or you’re going to be in a heap of trouble in 20 years.”

I thought about this while reading a story in The Las Vegas Sun about its rival paper’s attempt to prevent websites and bloggers from posting entire stories instead of just links to the source. The Las Vegas Review-Journal‘s “copyright enforcement partner” has sued at least 86 websites for copyright infringement, seeking $75,000 in damages and forfeiture of the domain names.

Here’s how it works, according to the Sun: the R-J’s partner, Righthaven LLC, scours the Internet in search of a copyright infringement. It then purchases the copyright of that specific story from the R-J’s owner and sues the website owner.

Critics acknowledge the paper and Righthaven have copyright claims but accuse them of using heavy-handed tactics on “mom-and-pop” websites, like the lawsuit filed against the cat-centric blog. One journalism professor calls the lawsuits “the McDonald’s coffee cases of copyright litigation — lawful but preposterous.”

I recommend the Vegas Sun’s story, if only for the fantastic analogies involving a 1967 Corvette and a pig. The lesson here is always give credit and link to an original source in your blog posts. (Thanks for the tip, Above the Law! Thanks for the illustration, e-how!)

Because you never know when private eyes are watching you.

I’ve never been to Raleigh-Durham International Airport, but it’s near Duke, so naturally I must root against it under any circumstances. (Go Terps!)

I was doubly delighted, then, upon learning that the airport had conceded defeat in a six-year battle with a local newspaper, The News & Observer, over a ban on vending boxes at the airport. The airport, known as RDU, had argued the news racks “would undermine airport security and aesthetics, impede passenger flow through the terminals, and reduce airport income.”

The case went up and down the federal court system until Thursday, when the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals denied RDU’s request for a rehearing en banc. The airport says it will place news racks at baggage claim and ticket areas of terminals, although The News & Observer and other papers want them in the terminals’ concourses.

That dispute is for another day; what I want to highlight is the “withering rebuke” of RDU written by Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III. Wilkinson, a former newspaper editorial page editor, who attacked RDU’s arguments and offered a spirited defense of the First Amendment. You can read the entire concurring opinion here.

His underlying point is “it is blackletter law that free speech is not to be wholly subordinated to administrative convenience.” And he concludes with the following gem:

“An informed citizenry is at the heart of this democracy, and narrowing the arteries of information in the manner sought by the Authority will only serve to impair our country’s coronary health.”

Our sister publication Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly’s blog has an interesting tale of “A job application gone very, very awry.” (Sidebar: Why is it that the only familial relationships newspapers have with one another is sister? There are no uncle publications? Second cousins? But I digress.)

The story, told entirely through e-mails, begins with a paralegal contacting a lawyer about a job. The lawyer responds that she would like him to do some freelance work in order to make sure he is the right person for the job. The paralegal responds, asking why he can’t be hired right away. And so it devolves into a verbal fight akin to one of those cartoons where the characters use white gloves to slap one another. The proverbial anvil-in-the-glove final salvo comes from the paralegal, who writes:

However, I just do not want to waste my time on a women attorney who thinks she knows it all…  It’s amazing that the [Massachusetts Bar] lets women practice law. Shouldn’t you be home cleaning and raising children?

The paralegal, a law student named Jesse Clark, reversed his position on women becoming lawyers a day after the e-mails were published. But the damage had been done. Clark subsequently announced on his since-shuttered blog that he no longer wants to become a lawyer. (You can see his farewell post here by scrolling down to May 31.)

The part that gets me about this whole exchange is what led up to Clark’s gender comments. In his previous e-mail, he ended it by telling the lawyer not to communicate with him further. Yet the next morning, the lawyer, Rosaleen J. Clayton, wrote back.

“I am not going to continue to argue with you which is why I will not address each of your comical points,” she began.

As one person noted commenting on the exchange, “While the student may have looked worse in one way, the lawyer is supposed to be professional. Getting involved in this kind pathetic spat reeks of unprofessionalism and poor judgement.”

Thoughts?

I held off as long as I could, but now that larger newspapers than this one have waded in, there no longer seems to be any point in staying out of it.

I’m talking, of course, about Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan, the persistent rumors that she is gay, and that old photo of her the Wall Street Journal resurrected this week.

On the subject of whether she’s a lesbian and whether it matters, I’ll cite the words of Dale Carpenter in a blog post over at the Volokh Conspiracy titled “Unless the Justices Start Skinny-Dipping in the Cert Pool“:

I don’t care whether they’re straight, gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, queer, questioning, two-spirit, men-who-have-sex-with-men, womyn-loving-womyn, autosexual, or beyond categorization.

…

In fact, if I think of it at all, I prefer to think of these folks as asexual. It helps me get on with the day.

For the record, Kagan’s friends (including Princeton chum Eliot Spitzer) have revealed that she’s a practicing heterosexual from way back.

But now, on to the topic of that pernicious, innuendo-filled photo of Kagan playing softball that ran on the cover of the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday. Or that innocuous, totally misunderstood photo. Take your pick. What I want to know from you, readers, is this: do you think the WSJ picked this photo expressly to insinuate that Kagan is a lesbian? (After all, according to no less an authority than the New York Post, softball “is to gay women what stickball is to Brooklyn.” ) Does knowing that last year, the WSJ ran a partial picture of New York Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger to illustrate a story about men with feminine facial features change your opinion?

Disturbing news out of Cleveland, and it doesn’t involve the Browns. (Ba-dum!)

A judge ordered the arrest of Cleveland Plain Dealer reporter Gabriel Baird on Tuesday after “he failed to appear at an abruptly scheduled hearing to determine how the newspaper obtained a psychiatric evaluation” of a suspected serial killer, according to the Plain Dealer.

Baird’s story based on the evaluation was published in November. The judge signed an arrest warrant for Baird’s arrest Tuesday afternoon, but “he was out on assignment,” according to the Plain Dealer. “Deputies then realized they could not serve the warrant because it did not contain Baird’s legal name.”

The judge dropped her request Wednesday when a fellow judge revealed himself as Baird’s source.

That raises a whole other host of questions, but it also gives a whole new spin on the open government advocacy goals of Sunshine Week.

I’ve come to view the social norms of the courtroom as very similar to a house of worship. You dress up nice, speak in hushed tones and try not to snore during a sermon or closing argument.

I also know you don’t whip out your cell phone in either sanctuary. If you have to call someone or need to have an in-depth conversation, you step out into the hallway as far away from everyone else as possible. It’s both considerate and common sense.

I was thinking about this as I read Andy Green’s criticism of the Baltimore City Circuit Court’s ban on Twitter in the courthouse, prompted by the Dixon trial and verdict. As The Daily Record’s Official Dixon Verdict Tweeter, I guess I’m part of the reason why the ban was enacted.

My tweets, for the record, came from the hallway outside the courtroom. Granted, most of my tweeting was done while we were awaiting a verdict, so I wasn’t leaving the courtroom during any proceeding. But when court was in session, I would try to leave quietly during a break in the action, even if that was simply someone else speaking.

Of course, the nature of the Dixon trial meant there were at least a half-dozen people “quietly” leaving the courtroom at the same time as me. Judge Dennis M. Sweeney solved the problem on at least two occasions by allowing a group of reporters to sit in the back of the courtroom and leave to Tweet and report on his cue. Once we left the courtroom, though, we were not allowed back inside until the proceeding ended.

So while you’re “working” from home today, answer me this: How would you handle Twitter if you were a judge?