Court Opinion

ID: 9564790
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 19:07:13.418806+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:18:40.257718
License: Public Domain

JOHNSON, Justice,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent from the Court’s conclusion that the qualified privilege does not apply in this case. In my view, the state did not demonstrate the need for the videotape.
In the hearing on the motion to quash the subpoena duces tecum, the prosecutor stated that there were a number of people at the accident scene at the time of the alleged resisting and obstructing a police officer by the newspaper reporter. The prosecutor listed six police officers as witnesses. The prosecutor argued that the state needed the videotape because the police officers may not have been observing the newspaper reporter at all times. When the magistrate judge asked the prosecutor whether he had contacted or interviewed all the onlookers and bystanders to ascertain whether they were watching the newspaper reporter all the time, the prosecutor said he had not. These onlookers and bystanders may well have satisfied the very need for which the prosecutor said he needed the video tape.
In my view, the state has not satisfied the second and third elements of the test adopted by this Court in In re Contempt of Wright, 108 Idaho 418, 421-23, 700 P.2d 40, 43-45 (1985). These elements are:
(2) Whether the information sought cannot be obtained by alternative means less destructive of First Amendment rights;
(3) Whether there is demonstrated a compelling and overriding interest in the information.
Id. at 421, 700 P.2d at 43.