Rule 904

Under banner headlines, the press of Baltimore pitched into a murder story from nearby Aberdeen. An 18-year-old girl had been strangled by her former fiance, who drove around for hours with her body in his car while he was getting up the nerve to shoot himself. Half an hour after Hearst's News-Post went to press, the man changed his story in one important detail: he had actually killed the girl while they were inside the Baltimore city limits. That brought the murder case within the range of the state courts in Baltimore, and a powerful thumb on the press, called Rule 904.

For nine years, Rule 904--the local judges' answer to trial by headline--has gagged Baltimore papers in their coverage of crime. It forbids news of confessions, bars comments by anyone bearing on a trial, prohibits pictures of the accused without his consent.

Fearing Rule 904, the News-Post hastily revised its story, so as to make it almost unintelligible to readers. On advice of a Baltimore judge, the paper yanked out its pictures of the car, the strangler's necktie and revolver. Out came his quotes; in went an editor's note that what the man said was "barred under Rule 904 of the Supreme Bench of Baltimore." The Evening Sun let its story stand, and last week "waited to see whether it would be cited for contempt of court.

For broadcasting a U.P. bulletin about a murder confession, five radio stations last month were cited for contempt. The Maryland Press Association is fighting a proposal by the Maryland Court of Appeals to extend Rule 904 throughout the state. Protested the Washington Post: "The effect is to cloak the conduct of the police in secrecy and deprive the whole public of information . . ."

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