This letter was sent Tuesday to Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva by the general counsel of the Los Angeles Times. It protests a criminal leak investigation of Times reporter Alene Tchekmedyian for her reporting on the department’s cover-up of an incident in which a deputy kneeled on the head of a handcuffed inmate for three minutes.
On behalf of the Los Angeles Times and Alene Tchekmedyian (“L.A. Times”), I am writing in response to your remarks at today’s press conference, in which you claimed the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department is criminally investigating a journalist, Ms. Tchekmedyian, for reporting on a security video showing a deputy kneeling on the head of a handcuffed inmate for three minutes. This outrageous assertion appears to be a thinly veiled attempt to intimidate Ms. Tchekmedyian for reporting unflattering (but entirely accurate) information about the conduct of individuals in your department and allegations of a cover-up by you and other officials. If the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department actually initiated an “investigation” of Ms. Tchekmedyian, it would contravene well-established constitutional law, which bars prosecutions of news reporters for publishing information from confidential official records, including leaked videos that involve matters of public interest. Although I would have assumed that someone in your position would be familiar with these longstanding legal principles, this letter should leave no doubt that any attempt to prosecute Ms. Tchekmedyian — or to threaten her with prosecution, as your announcement appeared intended to do today — is an abuse of your official position that risks subjecting you and the county to legal liability.
First, in Bartnicki v. Vopper, 532 U.S. 514 (2001), the United States Supreme Court held that journalists could not be held liable for publishing a recording of an illegally intercepted phone conversation that they received from a source, even though disclosure was…