Md. court rules Montgomery County woman would have to testify in Texas criminal trial

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A Montgomery County journalist has been ordered to testify at a homicide trial in Texas and cannot invoke the Maryland press shield law to avoid her court appearance, the Maryland Appellate Court held.

In a reported opinion written by Judge Kevin F. Arthur and filed last week, the Maryland Appellate Court affirmed the judgment of the Montgomery County Circuit Court ordering Jamie Leigh Thompson to attend and testify at a criminal trial in Dallas, Texas, rejecting Thompson’s argument that public policy precludes a court from compelling her testimony.

The appeals court found Thompson “could not possibly have relied on the Maryland press shield law” and instead could only have relied on Texas law because at the time of the crime, she was a Texas-based reporter investigating a crime that occurred in Texas for a Texas-based magazine.

Maryland’s Shield Law precludes the compelled disclosure of the source of any news or information, regardless of the media’s publication of the source’s identity, according to the Reporter’s Committee for Freedom of the Press.

The appellate court also concluded it would be “‘inefficient’ for a Maryland court to conduct a mini-trial on the issue of privilege only to have a Texas court decide the issue again if the Maryland court compelled the witness to testify in Texas.”

Lin Weeks, counsel for Thompson and senior staff attorney at the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, said the Committee disagrees with the Maryland Appellate Court’s decision.

“A Maryland journalist should be able to have a Maryland court hear her opposition to an out-of-state subpoena seeking privileged newsgathering information,” Weeks said in an email on Monday. “Maryland and Texas both have strong protections for journalists’ unpublished work product, and a Maryland court could look at either state’s law on reporter’s privilege and see that Ms. Thompson shouldn’t be required to testify.”

Before moving to Maryland in 2018, Thompson lived in Dallas and worked as a contributing editor for a Dallas-Fort Worth monthly publication, according to the opinion. In the fall of 2016, Thompson began reporting on the criminal investigation of the May 2016 murder of Ira Tobolowsky, a Dallas lawyer doused with gasoline and set on fire as he was getting into his car to go to work.

While writing, Thompson emailed with a suspect in the murder case whose mother had been represented by Tobolowsky in a serious of highly contentious lawsuits that the suspect brought against his mother.

According to the opinion, in April 2022, Texas prosecutors initiated an arrest warrant against the suspect for the murder, during which detectives discovered an email thread between Thompson and the suspect, where the suspect disclosed to Thompson details about parts of the case that had never been publicly released.

In July 2023, a Dallas County assistant district attorney asked Thompson if she would agree to testify at trial, which she declined. In August 2023, a Dallas County district court judge issued a certificate to secure Thompson’s presence at the trial under the Uniform Act to Secure the Attendance of Witnesses from Without a State in Criminal Proceedings.

Five days later, the state’s attorney for Montgomery County filed a petition in the Montgomery County Circuit Court on behalf of the state of Texas, requesting an order summoning Thompson to appear and testify at the trial. During the September 2023 hearing regarding the request for the order directing Thompson to testify, Thompson argued that the court should first determine whether she had a privilege not to testify under the Maryland or Texas press shield law.

According to the opinion, the circuit court ruled that Thompson must present her privilege claims to the Texas court and issued an order compelling her to appear and testify at the trial. Thompson then appealed the ruling.

The criminal trial, originally scheduled to begin in Dallas on September 26, 2023, was postponed until January 29, 2024, before the state of Texas moved to dismiss the charges against the suspect.

Though the prosecution, according to the motion, could not make a prima facie case at that time, the Maryland Appellate Court ruled on Thompson’s petition because, as the appellate court wrote, “it is entirely conceivable that the State may reinstitute the charges at some later date and reinvoke the procedures under the Uniform Act to compel Thompson to testify in Texas.”

A spokesperson for the Maryland Office of the Attorney General declined to comment.