Gag Order

Prosecutors in the Phil Spector murder trial have accused famous forensic scientist Henry C. Lee and two other witnesses of violating a court order by speaking about the case to the news media. Lee, who was recently found to have withheld crime scene evidence from prosecutors, has sharply criticized them in recent interviews with Chinese-language news organizations.

A judge Wednesday ordered Cardinal Roger M. Mahony to testify in a lawsuit alleging that he failed to protect parishioners from a pedophile teacher, but then granted the Los Angeles cleric's request for a trial delay. The lawsuit had been scheduled for trial Monday; Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Haley Fromholtz agreed to a two-month delay. Mary Grant, Western regional director of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, called the delay "a shame on the church."

Wal-Mart won a gag order to stop a fired security operative from talking to reporters and a judge ordered him to provide Wal-Mart attorneys with "the names of all persons to whom he has transmitted, since Jan. 15, 2007, any Wal-Mart information." The court papers made public Monday follow a string of revelations about the retailer's large surveillance operations and its business plans. Wal-Mart Stores Inc.

A judge Monday denied a prosecution request for a gag order in the murder trial of Jesse James Hollywood, ruling that intensive publicity -- including a recent feature film -- has not been "unduly prejudicial." In a brief hearing, Santa Barbara County Superior Court Judge Brian Hill turned down a motion that would have prevented attorneys on both sides from speaking substantively about the case outside of court.

A rapper under house arrest can promote his new CD and novel but cannot talk about the second-degree murder charge against him, a Louisiana judge has ruled. Corey Miller, 35, has been ordered to stay at his grandmother's Kenner, La., home until his new trial in the Jan. 12, 2002, death of a 16-year-old boy who was shot in the chest during a brawl at a now-closed club in Harvey. No trial date has been set.

MEET DANIEL P. and Allison B. and their children, Mujahid Daniel and Mujahid David, ages 13 and 11. Not your typical American family, but their situation may affect your right to speak to your children. During their marriage, according to court documents, Daniel and Allison followed a "quasi-Muslim philosophy." They also "amassed a large quantity of weapons," and Daniel was imprisoned for illegal weapons possession and for making threats.

The U.S. Marine Corps has threatened to punish two members of the military legal team representing a terrorism suspect being held at Guantanamo Bay if they continue to speak publicly about reported prisoner abuse, a civilian lawyer from the defense team said Saturday. The action directed at Lt. Col. Colby Vokey and Sgt.

In a setback for lawyer and TV commentator Gloria Allred, the Supreme Court on Monday refused to hear a free-speech challenge to the increasingly common practice of judges issuing "gag orders" for all the lawyers in highly publicized criminal cases. The order turning down Allred's appeal came on an unusually quiet first day of the court's fall session. By law, the justices open their term on the first Monday of October.

The ushers in Pauley Pavilion were instructed before Sunday's basketball game not to discuss with spectators Saturday's shellacking of the school's football team by USC. With that philosophy in mind, basketball also was a forbidden subject by halftime. Facing Coppin State, a team that took the court 0-5, the Bruins, combining a lack of intensity with a lack of execution, were down by five points.

Connecticut libraries lost an emergency Supreme Court appeal Friday in their effort to be freed from a gag order and participate in a congressional debate over the Patriot Act. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg denied the appeal and offered an unusually detailed explanation of her decision. Ginsburg said the American Civil Liberties Union had made reasonable arguments on behalf of its client, identified in a filing as the Library Connection, an association of libraries in Connecticut.