Attorneys argue to preserve privacy in leaked Adachi report case

Attorneys argue to preserve privacy in leaked Adachi report case

Attorneys for San Francisco police and a freelance journalist, whose house and office were raided over the leak of a controversial police report on the death of San Francisco Public Defender Jeff Adachi, both tried to convince a judge Friday not to reveal the identities of key players in the case.

Five superior court judges authorized warrants for searches of journalist Bryan Carmody's home and office for information on who leaked the police report. The raids raised questions over why the warrants were authorized, given Carmody was a journalist protected by California's shield law.

On Friday, Judge Joseph Quinn quickly quashed a warrant for Carmody's cellphone records. But he declined to rule immediately on a motion to unseal an affidavit the First Amendment Coalition filed after a police department attorney asked to redact personally identifying information of an informant who alerted police that Carmody had obtained the Adachi report.

Quinn seemed to leave little doubt, however, about where he would come out on the question.

"Let's say there's a homicide police are investigating, and someone comes forward and says, 'I think I know where the gun is, but I'll be killed if it's known ... and the gun is found," Quinn said. "But that person sees this warrant [unsealed], the confidential identifying information disclosed, and they think twice before going to the police."

"That clearly weighs in favor of nondisclosure," he said.

Following an in-camera review of the warrant materials, First Amendment Coalition attorney Aaron Field asked that information identifying Carmody's confidential sources also be redacted. The coalition originally moved to unseal the entire warrant, arguing the public needs to know what happened.

"Aren't you here for the public? How is that consistent with the public interest?" Quinn replied.

Police on May 10 raided Carmody's home with a sledgehammer and confiscated his newsroom equipment after he sold the police report to three television stations. The report revealed Adachi died in a San Francisco apartment after ingesting cocaine and alcohol with a woman who was not his wife.

"It is a rare instance to have a search warrant be issued at all, but in this instance Mr. Carmody had sledge-hammers to his home, a complete search of his home a complete confiscation of his newsroom," Thomas Burke, Carmody's attorney with Davis Wright Tremaine LLP, said outside court Friday.

"That's an extraordinary sequence of events completely authorized by San Francisco judges," Burke said. "So it's critical that there be a process that reviews what went wrong, so it's not repeated."

-- Helen Christophi