Journalist sets record for longest time in Jail on a contempt of court charge

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Blogger jailed for defying grand jury sets record
He's U.S. journalist imprisoned longest in contempt of court
Bob Egelko, Chronicle Staff Writer
Tuesday, February 6, 2007


Josh Wolf, a blogger who refused to give a videotape of a San Francisco anarchist protest to a federal grand jury, achieves an unwanted distinction today, when he becomes the longest-imprisoned journalist for contempt of court in U.S. history.

Wolf, 24, is spending his 169th day at the Federal Correctional Institution in Dublin, surpassing the imprisonment of Vanessa Leggett, a Texas freelancer who defied a grand jury's subpoena in 2001 for notes from a book she was writing about a murder case.

Leggett was freed when the grand jury's term expired. The grand jury in Wolf's case, which is investigating an alleged arson attempt on a San Francisco police car, is scheduled to adjourn in July. But a prosecutor said in court papers last month that the term could be extended six months.

U.S. District Judge William Alsup held Wolf in contempt of court in August, denied furloughs for him for the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays, and turned down his latest bid for freedom in a one-paragraph order Jan. 30 without holding a hearing.

Wolf brought his video camera to a July 2005 Mission District protest against an economic summit taking place in Scotland. A police officer was hit in the head and suffered a fractured skull, and a foam cushion under a patrol car was set on fire -- the basis for the federal investigation, because the car was partly funded with a federal grant to the Police Department.

Part of Wolf's video was shown on local television, but a Joint Terrorism Task Force of FBI agents and police sought the entire tape and Wolf refused, saying he would not act as the government's eyes and ears. In court, his lawyers said the tape showed no evidence of a crime and invited Alsup to look at the outtakes, but the judge declined.

Wolf was freed on bail in September but returned to prison three weeks later after an appeals court upheld Alsup's contempt order.

Wolf's lawyers plan to file another motion for release sometime before July, arguing that his imprisonment amounts to punishment for someone who has committed no crime. But in light of Alsup's last response, said attorney Dan Siegel, "the prospects look pretty bleak, absent some further intervention by Congress.''

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