HARRISONBURG - Harrisonburg's top prosecutor said this morning that the state will pay $10,000 in legal fees that James Madison University's student newspaper incurred while arguing against a seizure of staff photographs that documented a riot in April.
In exchange, The Breeze has provided Commonwealth's Attorney Marsha Garst with 20 photos to aid in her prosecution of rioters during Springfest on April 10. Police that day used pepper spray and tear gas to disperse a crowd of as many as 8,000 college-aged adults at an annual off-campus block party near JMU. Dozens were arrested and several people, including Harrisonburg police officers, were injured, authorities said.
Garst said Virginia's Division of Risk Management will pay $10,000 to the Washington law firm that represented The Breeze after she and officers raided the newsroom of more than 900 photos on April 16 despite Editor Katie Thisdell's objections. After the raid, a third-party held the images while The Breeze mounted a defense against the seizure.
Garst said she wrote out criteria for the types of photos that would aid her prosecution, particularly those showing violence and victims. She said the student newspaper had the most helpful photos of any news agency at the riot.
The prosecutor said she regrets raising fears and concerns on staff, but that she felt there was a pressing need to review the photos because of unidentified suspects and victims.
The seizure of photos spurred written statements of concern from representatives of the Society of Professional Journalists and Student Press Law Center, who cited the federal Privacy Protection Act as a guard against newsroom searches and seizures.
Thisdell, 20, a Roanoke native, said she cited the act during a tense moment the day of the raid, but gave up the photos when authorities threatened to take all electronics from the newsroom.
Congress established the federal Privacy Protection Act in 1980 to protect newsrooms after authorities raided Stanford University's Stanford Daily in 1971. The law went into effect two years after the Supreme Court ruled against editors and the newspaper who sued, charging their First and Fourth Amendment rights had been violated.
Since the passage of the Privacy Protection Act, no more than a dozen cases citing the law have made it to the stage of written court filings, said Frank LoMonte, executive director of the Student Press Law Center.
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