Should the Offended Try the Offender?

As editor of a crusading weekly back in the 1930s, New Mexico Newsman Will Harrison made so many enemies that he took to carrying a hunk of type metal for self-defense. Now that he has turned columnist in 16 Southwestern dailies, 13 weeklies and two monthly magazines, Harrison is still stirring up trouble so strenuously that Judge Paul Tackett of the state district court in Albuquerque has just hit him with a $250 fine and a ten-day jail sentence for contempt of court. While the punishment itself does not seem unbearably burdensome, the case has reverberated far beyond the borders of New Mexico.

Too Light a Rap? The battle goes back to June, when a car driven by Charles N. Morris, assistant district attorney of Eddy County, rammed into a car carrying a Mexican-American farm worker named Gregorio Molina, his wife, and eight of their children. The parents and three of the children were killed. The other five children were injured. Morris admitted that he was boozed up at the time of the accident and pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter. With his usual courtroom briskness, Judge Tackett took less than two hours to hear the case. Morris was ordered to pay a $500 fine, which was suspended on condition that he pay $500 court costs. Morris was also ordered to report to a probation officer once a month for a year before he appears in court for final sentencing. Tackett said he was reluctant to send Morris to jail lest the former D.A. be killed by some prisoner he had sent there himself.

Such reasoning did not impress Harrison, who decided that Morris had been let off with too light a rap. Harrison made his view plain in no fewer than six different columns. He contrasted the Morris trial with a similar manslaughter case in which a car driven by a drunken New Mexican construction la borer, Elirio Trujillo, rammed another car, killing three people. Tried before another judge, Trujillo got one to five years in prison. But Harrison failed to mention that while Morris was a first offender, Trujillo had been arrested twice on drunken-driving charges, and had escaped from jail shortly before the accident. Harrison also neglected to point out that it is commonplace for New Mexico judges to hand down deferred sentences to first offenders.

Too Hard a Kick? After Harrison's sixth attack, a lawyer for Morris charged that the columns were in contempt of court because they were "designed to ridicule, intimidate and influence the court" and presented "a clear and present danger to the administration of justice in New Mexico." The judge tried Harrison for contempt and found him guilty. The press has less freedom to comment on pending cases than on closed cases, and Tackett ruled that since he had deferred sentencing, the Morris case was still before the court.

Though Harrison's reporting had been somewhat lopsided, Tackett's retaliation raised grave questions. Can a judge stifle press comment on a case simply by deferring the sentence? Should a judge who is offended by press comments be permitted to try the offender? Most newsmen thought not. The Portales, N. Mex., News-Tribune called Harrison's sentence "one of the most flagrant examples of judicial stupidity that has come to the attention of New Mexicans in years. It poses a threat not only to a free press but to the public's right to criticize the judiciary." The New Mexico Press Association chimed in with an offer to aid Harri son's appeal. At week's end the American Society of Newspaper Editors announced its support too, said that its lawyer, former Attorney General William P. Rogers, was ready to help.

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