DENVER — Joyce Meskis didn't have any warning when the five policemen marched into her office that day, search warrant in hand. They were there to search the sales records of Meskis' Tattered Cover Bookstore, a Denver landmark, as part of an investigation into a small-time drug operation.
"I was dumbfounded," said the 60-year-old, whose bookstore is one of the largest independently owned in the country. "We had never faced a search warrant before."
In a matter of minutes, she was on the phone to her lawyer, who advised her to politely decline to cooperate. With that, the battle was joined in what has become one of the most prominent 1st Amendment cases in the country. Now, two years later, the Colorado Supreme Court is expected to issue an opinion this spring about whether the police have the authority to search the Tattered Cover's sales records and, by extension, the records of other Colorado bookstores.
The case could decide whether booksellers have the right, even the responsibility, to keep their customers' purchases confidential. Losing that right, activists say, could influence what publishers are willing to print and what bookstores are willing to sell.
The drug lab investigation was one in a growing trend by law enforcement agencies to seek computer records from booksellers to assist in building a criminal case. The first of these cases occurred in 1998, when independent counsel Kenneth Starr subpoenaed two Washington bookstores during his investigation of Monica Lewinsky's affair with then-President Bill Clinton. That effort was sidetracked by Lewinsky's agreement to cooperate with Starr's investigation, but it opened the door to other attempts.
Even with the Lewinsky case already on the books, Meskis had no inkling of the judicial odyssey she was about to embark upon, one that has become a cause celebre in the civil rights and literary communities nationwide. In January, San Francisco's A Clean Well-Lighted Place for Books--itself an institution of sorts--held a fund-raiser that took in more than $10,000 to help defray the Tattered Cover's legal costs. Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Michael Chabon and author Dorothy Allison attended, saying the case threatens the right to read without fear of prying government eyes.
"I believe in the right to privacy," Chabon said. "I believe in the freedom to read what one chooses. As a writer, a reader and an American, I truly hold the 1st Amendment sacred."
The case arose when a narcotics detail was staking out a trailer in suburban Denver where agents suspected a methamphetamine lab was operating. As part of the surveillance, the police routinely combed through the trailer's trash and, at one point, came across a Tattered Cover shipping envelope, which had an invoice number on the front.
When police raided the trailer, they found two nearly new books by humorously bogus authors: "Advanced Techniques of Psychedelic and Amphetamine Manufacture," by Uncle Fester, and "The Construction and Operation of Clandestine Drug Laboratories," by Jack B. Nimble. The books fit neatly into the envelope found in the trash, so investigators hoped to bolster their case by connecting the trailer owner to the drug how-to books. But to do so, they said they needed to see the Tattered Cover's computerized records to match the invoice number.
According to an appeals brief filed by Dan Recht, the Tattered Cover lawyer, investigators had to shop around before they could find a district attorney willing to approve a search warrant for the bookstore. When they finally did get one, police showed up unannounced to go through the Tattered Cover files.
Meskis, who leans toward cardigan sweaters and comfortable shoes, remembered, as she put it, "trying to beam thoughts" for the police to stop because she knew the case was one she would have to fight. Over the years the 1st Amendment protections that cover publishing books and newspapers have evolved to cover the institutions that sell them as well.
The police, for their part, saw no difference between a bookstore and a hardware store in searching for and confiscating records. They simply wanted to link the owner of the trailer with the books found during the drug raid. What they probably did not know was that Meskis is one of the more formidable advocates of 1st Amendment rights in the United States.
"Joyce is a very stubborn lady," said Chris Finan, president of the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression. "Her philosophy is that people should make their own decisions about what they read, and her job is to make available to her customers what they request."
Meskis, among other things, is the recipient of the William J. Brennan Jr. and PEN/Newman's Own First Amendment awards, which honor those devoted to free expression. She has led a number of 1st Amendment fights in Colorado, including a successful 1994 campaign to stop a proposed constitutional amendment that would have made it easier for communities to label materials as obscene.
