Josh Wolf Faces a Year in Jail for Resisting Grand Jury. Attend His Hearing This Thursday

For Immediate Release: July 19, 2006
Grand Jury Resistance Project
Contact: Kris Hermes 510-836-0395
http://www.FBIWitchHunt.com / http://www.joshwolf.net/grandjury

Independent Journalist Charged with Civil Contempt for Resisting Grand Jury Subpoena
Josh Wolf Threatened with Jail Time for Trying to Protect His and Others’ Constitutional Rights

Hearing Thursday, July 20 at 1pm before U.S. District Court Judge William Alsup
Press conference at Noon in front of the federal courthouse, 450 Golden Gate Avenue

San Francisco Independent journalist Josh Wolf, who is facing civil contempt charges for refusing to testify and provide evidence to a federal grand jury, will appear before U.S. District Court Judge William Alsup this Thursday. On behalf of the government, Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Finigan is seeking video footage of a July 2005 protest in the Mission district against the Group of Eight (G8), meeting in Scotland at the time. If convicted, Wolf could be jailed for up to 13 months.

“The charge of contempt and possible jail time for invoking my constitutional rights to protect my work is unconscionable,” said Josh Wolf, in anticipation of this Thursday’s hearing. “A conviction will have an incredible chilling effect on my work as journalist,” continued Wolf. “But it will also undermine the protections provided to journalists in gathering and disseminating information, as well as the ability of people to speak out and be heard.”

Activists and Lawyers supporting Wolf contend that his grand jury subpoena and subsequent charge of contempt is an attempt to avoid California’s strict Reporter Shield Law, which protects journalists’ files and notes. The federal government says it is investigating alleged damage to a police vehicle, stemming from the G8 protests last summer, yet no damage was officially reported. Multiple witnesses have corroborated that the police vehicle in question was driven into a crowd of protesters. This action was followed by two police officers exiting the vehicle and violently assaulting multiple people on the street.

This week, San Francisco Supervisors Ross Mirkarimi and Chris Daly introduced a resolution “resisting the federal government’s intervention in the City and County of San Francisco’s investigation of the July 8th, 2005 G-8 protest and expressing support for the California Shield Law.” The Supervisors charged that the grand jury is an “attempt to circumvent the local judicial system,” and they opposed federal government intervention in this matter. The full Board will vote on the resolution Tuesday.

Wolf’s experience with the federal government and this grand jury is not isolated, and comes as dozens of journalists and activists across the country are being threatened with indictments and jail time. “The U.S. government’s harassment of Josh Wolf is part of a broader, renewed use of the federal grand jury to suppress dissent,” said Samantha Levens of the Grand Jury Resistance Project (GJRP), a coalition in support of Wolf and activists being harassed by the government. In May, Jeff Hogg, a full-time nursing student who works with developmentally disabled adults in Eugene, Oregon, was jailed for refusing to comply with a federal grand jury investigating environmental and animal rights activists. In San Francisco, a federal grand jury has recently been reconvened to investigate the animal liberation movement. Many activists refused to testify for the previous grand jury that expired in May. However, new subpoenas to appear in August have been served on multiple animal rights activists.

Information compiled by the Grand Jury Resistance Project (GJRP), a coalition that provides education on politically motivated attacks by government and support to people targeted by these attacks, shows that grand juries are currently being used against environmental and animal rights activists, as well as groups that have historically struggled for self-determination. The GJRP reports that in the past year, at least 66 individuals have been subpoenaed and/or indicted in Atlanta, Denver, Eugene, Sacramento, San Francisco, San Diego, Tampa, FL, and Trenton, NJ. At least fourteen people have refused to testify, and some were jailed for contempt. In an affidavit filed in connection with the indictment of three environmental activists in Auburn, CA, the FBI irrelevantly referenced “anarchists” and “anarchism” 26 times. GJRP believes that the grand jury to which Josh Wolf has been subpoenaed is part of the same broad and unconstitutional federal investigation into anarchist and antiwar activity and other political movements that oppose U.S. policies.

For further information on Josh Wolf and his case: http://www.joshwolf.net/grandjury

One problem: this is a federal case. There is no federal shield law. California's shield law is irrelevant here.

Packing the court with people will have no bearing on the judge's ruling.

The point is that either SF and the feds are conspiring to do an end run around the state's Shield Law by convening a grand jury to compell Josh Wolf to hand over footage where that ability is restricted at the state level, or the feds are simply using the incident as an excuse to harass and intimidate political activists. And, yet, they may be guilty of both.

The point is that the feds are trying to circumvent California's shield law. And packing the court is important for many reasons: Showing Josh that he has support from the community. Being witnesses to the usually secretive grand jury process. And putting pressure on the Judge to keep the hearing open to the public.

Anne, the feds don't have to try to go around a state law. ALL federal laws supercede state laws. This case is being tried to federal court. State laws are irrelevant here. Civics 101.

Packing the court to make Josh feel good is just fine. But it will have NO effect on the judge or on the law he cites when sentencing him to jail.

Anne, the feds don't have to try to go around a state law. ALL federal laws supercede state laws.

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

Why doesn't he just give them the tape? There is no press freedom, or first amendment issue here. He's not trying to protect a source. If, for example, he'd filmed an interview with someone who was in silhouette, or wanted to protect their identity, and the police wanted the film to identify that person, than I could support not giving up the tape. He'd be protecting a source in that case. In this case, it seems to be about his own martyr complex. It's raw footage of a demo we're talking about here. There has been no prior agreement to guard someone's identity or anything. It's stupid for him to withhold the tape and possibly face time in prison or a huge fine. Nothing is served by that. It's seems like a case of a useless protest.

In order to form an opinion about it, I'd need to know if there actually is any illegal activity on the tape where you could see clear photos of people's faces. It is a fact that the police were there in high numbers, and they have officers assigned to filming demonstrations with video cameras, so the police do own tapes with footage of the people standing around before and during this G8 march. It would be worst if he had someone saying their name to the camera, and interviews.

One person said, "Why doesn't he just give them the tape? There is no press freedom, or first amendment issue here. He's not trying to protect a source."

It's HIS work, his tape, and who knows, there might not be anything on the tape that'd be useful to the police. Sometimes after you video or take pictures or audio at something, you throw out or erase over your originals, or whatever you had that was not of as good quality. Josh has a right to do that, or to just not hand it over.

Another person said, "In order to form an opinion about it, I'd need to know if there actually is any illegal activity on the tape where you could see clear photos of people's faces."

It was dark out by the time the really crazy stuff started happening. Dark! So chances are, whatever the police has is probably of equal quality to whatever Josh had.

"It would be worst if he had someone saying their name to the camera, and interviews."

He's allowed to take interviews. People know well enough to disguise themselves before they do something crazy. I like the interview technique for some situations, but the kind of protest that they had that day doesn't really lend itself to the video technique.

I still don't see the point of holding on to the tape if doing so can send you to federal prison, or give you a fat fine. No source is being protected, no journalistic principal is being upheld. It seems incredibly dumb to go to prison for no good reason. It's probably just amateurish grainy footage anyway. His friends should just tell him to give it up for his own good.