Subject: Editor and Pub: McKinney gag order set "scary precedent"
From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 16 Nov 1999 13:41:26 EST

Editor & Publisher
November 13, 1999
11 West 19th Street, New York, NY 10011-4234
(Fax: 212-929-1894) 
(E-Mail: [email-masked] )
( http://www.mediainfo.com )

             Gagged For Life:
Plea Agreement Prevents Murderer of Gay Student From Discussing Case, EVER

By Mark Fitzgerald

    A little-noticed provision in the plea agreement that spared Aaron 
McKinney from execution in the murder of gay University of Wyoming freshman 
Matthew Shepard bans McKinney from ever talking about the highly publicized 
case with journalists.
    "Mr. McKinney further agrees...to refrain from talking to any news media 
organizations regarding State v. McKinney," the agreement reads in part.
    The agreement also gags almost anyone else involved in the murder case 
from ever discussing it:  "Pursuant to this letter and the Wyoming Rules of 
Professional Conduct, the defense attorneys, including the public defenders' 
office, the mitigation specialist and any and all other members of the 
defense team agree to not comment to the news media regarding this case; 
other than, if appropriate, releasing a brief statement that counsel has 
agreed not to comment to the news media pursuant to an agreement with the 
Shepard family."

    Wyoming journalists and civil-rights activists are alarmed at the 
implications of the life-long ban, which appears to be unprecedented in the 
nation.
    "I'm extremely worried about it," said Jim Angell, a veteran reporter who 
is now executive director of the Wyoming Press Association.  "You have to be 
very concerned about any kind of legal document that takes away a person's 
right to 
speech, no matter who he is."
    "I have people saying to me all the time:  I've never agreed with the 
ACLU, but this is too much," said Billie Ruth Edwards, interim director of 
the Wyoming chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.
    In the plea agreement McKinney, 22, will receive two life sentences and 
avoid a possible death penalty for his conviction in the murder of Shepard, 
who was beaten, pistol-whipped and left to die beneath a cattle fence on the 
plains outside Laramie, Wyoming.  By Nov. 12, it was still not clear if the 
agreement has been signed by the trial judge, according to  lawyers and 
journalists in Wyoming.

    The gag provisions of the plea bargain reflect the demands made by 
Matthew Shepard's family, according to his father, Dennis Shepard, and Cal 
Rerucha, the Albany County, Wyo., prosecutor in the case.  In an statement to 
the court at the time of McKinney's conviction, Dennis Shepard alluded to the 
permanent gag order, saying in reference to McKinney:  "Best of all you won't 
be a symbol.  No years of publicity, no chance of a commutation, no nothing – 
just a miserable future and a more miserable end."
    "You can understand the motives of the Shepard family and sympathize with 
them, but I think it's a scary precedent," said Paul McMasters, the First 
Amendment ombudsman at The Freedom Forum. 
    "Even without being all that concerned about Mr. McKinney losing his 
right of free speech, it is the First Amendment right of the public to hear 
all sides of an emotional, wrenching case... This [agreement] assumes on its 
face that the only value of free speech is to the criminal.   The fact of the 
matter is there is great value of that speech to the public, to scholars and 
to historians."

    Ironically, the Shepards are "doing exactly what they say they don't 
want, which is they're drawing attention to Aaron McKinney and turning him 
into a symbol," said William K. Dobbs, a New York City lawyer and gay 
activist.  The Queer Watch co-founder has been publicizing the gag order, 
which he calls "a kind of totalitarianism."
    "Aaron McKinney and his attorneys are primary sources about a very 
notorious and contentious part of Wyoming history, yet they can never comment 
on it?" he said.  "It may be a little dramatic to talk about the gulag, but 
in America you can't just throw someone into a hole and keep them silent 
forever."
    "This," First Amendment Ombudsman McMasters said, "is a gag order with 
legs."