From the Idaho Statesman

By Kevin Fixler

Idaho won’t be able to carry out the death penalty until the state prison system improves media witnesses’ access to a concealed room where prison officials prepare for and perform lethal injections, a federal judge ruled Tuesday.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Debora Grasham for the District of Idaho issued a preliminary injunction that orders the Idaho Department of Correction to upgrade the wing of the maximum security prison where executions take place so members of the media can see and hear what happens before, during and after a prisoner is put to death. The state cannot pursue an execution until IDOC makes the improvements, she wrote.

“It is clear that the performance of capital punishment in the United States has historically been open to the public,” Grasham said in her 34-page decision. “The court finds that the means and methods of an execution were also open and obvious, allowing the public to witness not only the execution itself, but the cause and effect of the execution method used.”

Grasham’s ruling came in response to three news outlets, including the Idaho Statesman, suing IDOC over the right to hear and see what goes on in the so-called “medical team room,” where the execution team prepares and administers drugs for a lethal injection. The two other news outlets were The Associated Press and East Idaho News in Idaho Falls.

Earlier in the case, Grasham denied IDOC’s efforts to dismiss the lawsuit outright.

She rejected an argument that the matter in question, of restricting journalists from seeing and hearing the medical team room during an execution, did not reflect a free press issue in violation of the First Amendment. Grasham also brushed aside arguments from the state that the lawsuit was “speculative and hypothetical” because no death row prisoner is currently scheduled to be executed, and that the news outlets could not prove potential harm over IDOC’s policy.

The Idaho Attorney General’s Office represented IDOC in the legal matter. Neither IDOC nor the Attorney General’s Office responded to requests for comment from the Statesman. The Attorney General’s Office has contracted with private attorney Tanner Smith of Boise-based law firm Moore Elia Kraft & Stacey for the case, and Smith did not respond to an email seeking comment either.

Smith contended in oral arguments earlier this month that granting the media’s request to hear and see what happens in the execution chamber preparation room, which would require IDOC to add a camera and microphone to an existing closed-circuit broadcast system, would place an “undue burden” on the state. Doing so also would constitute a judge ordering unprecedented access to a state’s execution process, Smith argued.

“It goes beyond what any court has ever done,” Smith told Grasham at the hearing.

Attorney Wendy Olson, a former U.S. attorney for Idaho and now a partner with Stoel Rives law firm, represented the three news outlets in the case. Olson in an earlier interview acknowledged that asking the judge to pause all executions in the state while the prison system addresses its access issues was a hefty request. 

“It is a big ask of a court to say, ‘State, you can’t do anything until you fix this access issue,’ ” Olson told the Statesman after this month’s hearing. “We obviously think that’s also what the First Amendment demands, and Judge Grasham will have to weigh those carefully when she decides what to put in her order.” 

Olson repeatedly argued that media witnesses at an execution, representing the interests of the public, are entitled to see all activities “inextricably intertwined” to the state carrying out the death penalty. That includes when the execution team prepares and administers lethal injection drugs by depressing syringes into intravenous lines attached to the prisoner.

In court, Smith rebutted the assertion. He framed the action of pressing syringe plungers — which is out of sight of witnesses — to deliver execution drugs to the condemned prisoner as a “minute detail.”

“It’s a minute detail that the deadly drug is administered?” Grasham fired back. “I don’t see that as a minute detail. It’s inextricably intertwined.”

Smith later conceded that an execution by lethal injection cannot happen without prison officials pushing the drugs into the IV line connected to the condemned. But to grant journalists more visual and audio access to the process, he argued, still went beyond the scope of what media witnesses had a right to hear and see.

“Ultimately, the court finds that a historical tradition of audio and visual access to the means and methods used in enacting capital punishment is well-documented,” Grasham wrote in her order Tuesday. “At this preliminary stage, the preparation and administration of the lethal injection drugs that occurs within the medical team room, is an aspect of the execution that plaintiffs have demonstrated a right to witness under the First Amendment.”

Death Penalty Action, a group that advocates for abolishing capital punishment in the U.S., praised Tuesday’s ruling.

“The days of public hangings are long gone, but executions are perhaps the most invasive government program in existence,” Abraham Bonowitz, the group’s co-founder and executive director, told the Statesman. “The media is the eyes and ears of the public, and as such they should witness every moment of the process.” 

Idaho failed to execute prisoner Thomas Creech last year

Idaho last executed a prisoner more than a dozen years ago, when it lethally injected convicted murderer Richard Leavitt in June 2012. The state tried to execute its longest-serving death row prisoner, Thomas Creech, convicted of three murders in Idaho, in February 2024, but called off his planned lethal injection when prison officials could not find a suitable vein for an IV for almost an hour.

Creech, 74, has remained in limbo ever since. His attorneys with the legal nonprofit Federal Defender Services of Idaho have argued in federal court that a second attempt to execute their client would represent cruel and unusual punishment in violation of his Eighth Amendment rights. The judge issued a stay of execution for Creech, which remains in effect pending a ruling after a December hearing.

The Federal Defenders declined to comment on Grasham’s order, which effectively blocks the possibility of Creech’s execution, at least until the prison system improves media access. Another of the nonprofit’s clients, death row prisoner Gerald Pizzuto, 69, who is terminally ill with bladder cancer, also is under an active execution stay.

Following the state’s failure to execute Creech, the Republican-controlled Idaho Legislature passed a bill this year, which Republican Gov. Brad Little signed into law, to make a firing squad the state’s primary method to carry out the death penalty starting in July 2026. New IDOC Director Bree Derrick told a legislative committee in March that remodeling the execution chamber for the controversial method will take about nine months of construction.

Little’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Idaho applauded Grasham’s decision.

“Secrecy in executions is unacceptable and should never be tolerated. The public deserves full access to the process to ensure accountability,” Leo Morales, the ACLU of Idaho’s executive director, said in an email to the Statesman. “We believe the death penalty should be abolished entirely, but as long as it persists, the state must administer it with full transparency.”

None of the state’s 15 Democratic lawmakers voted in support of switching from lethal injection to a firing squad for Idaho executions. Idaho Democrats, however, have not entirely opposed capital punishment. 

“There are some crimes that are so heinous I don’t have a moral problem with applying the death penalty in those cases,” House Minority Leader Ilana Rubel, D-Boise, told the Statesman late last year. “Certainly the murders in Moscow come to mind on that front. … I feel like the firing squad is kind of a bridge too far.”

Bryan Kohberger, the defendant in the University of Idaho student homicidescase, is charged with four counts of first-degree murder, and prosecutors intend to seek the death penalty if he is convicted. His capital murder trial in Boise is scheduled to start with jury selection in late July.

The execution chamber renovation to accommodate a firing squad is expected to come with almost a $1 million price tag, IDOC previously told the Statesman. A design and building firm is rescoping the project in light of the new law to update the estimated cost and timeline, in preparation of construction, Derrick said.

“We are confident that we will be able to make that happen in advance of the July 1 effective date next year,” she told the legislative committee.

This year, South Carolina became the first U.S. state to execute a prisoner by firing squad in nearly 15 years, having now done so twice since March. Utah, Missouri and Oklahoma are the three other states that allow shooting a prisoner to death, but only Idaho has made the method its preferred way to carry out the death penalty.

When Idaho’s new law takes effect next year, lethal injection will remain the state’s backup execution method.

This story was originally published April 29, 2025 at 2:38 PM.

From the Idaho Statesman

From the Idaho Capital Sun

Enrollment data, employee salaries and transaction data now available on website managed by Idaho State Controller’s Office

BY: CLARK CORBIN 

The Idaho State Controller’s Office has expanded its Transparent Idaho website to include data detailing how schools and districts spent public money and pay their employees.

The Idaho State Controller’s Office has published public records and data about state government on Transparent Idaho since the free online data portal launched in 2012.

But that effort has been expanding in recent years.

In 2021, the Idaho Legislature passed House Bill 73, which requires uniform accounting, budgeting and financial reporting procedures for Idaho cities, counties and urban renewal districts. That information has been added to Transparent Idaho, the Idaho Capital Sun previously reported. 

In October, the Sun reported financial data for 198 Idaho cities is now available on Transparent Idaho. 

“We’ve had state data for 10-plus years, but our vision has always been to have local governments on Transparent Idaho as well,” Idaho State Controller Brandon Woolf said in a phone interview Tuesday afternoon.

The Idaho State Controller’s Office announced the latest Transparent Idaho addition on Monday — the posting of new education financial data. 

The new education data includes detailed enrollment figures for schools and districts, workforce salary data and transactions made by education providers, such as school districts and public charter schools.

Woolf said publishing the data isn’t meant to serve as a “gotcha” to public school districts and charter schools. Instead, Woolf said publishing the data can build trust with Idahoans and encourage the public to become informed and engaged with its government and the decisions policymakers set. 

“The public being able to track and trace and understand where the taxpayers’ money is being spent can go a long way to helping set the right types of policy and making good policy decisions,” Woolf said.

The education data is already publicly available. School districts are required by law to post it on their own websites, and Idaho Education News has been publishing enrollment, salary data, test scores, per-pupil expenditures, higher education go-on rates and more on its education data site for years. 

But publishing the education data on Transparent Idaho means the state government is now publishing education transparency data for public schools, districts and public charters schools in one spot, alongside other financial transparency data related to state government, cities and counties.  

Transparent Idaho only publishes data about schools, districts and charter schools that receive public funding. Data for private schools, homeschool programs and other private education choice programs do not appear on Transparent Idaho, the Idaho State Controller’s Office said in a press release issued Monday.

Moving forward, Woolf said he will work on adding additional demographic information and data visualization tools to Transparent Idaho — with an eye toward allowing the public to have more data to make apples-to-apples comparisons between schools and districts. 

All of the new education data is available free online at https://transparent.idaho.gov.

From the Idaho Capital Sun

From the Idaho Education News

By Ryan Suppe

It’s not a secret that some Idaho lawmakers delete their emails and text messages — which are public records when they relate to legislation and other official business, according to state law. 

But they rarely admit it publicly. 

Rep. Barbara Ehardt bucked this trend last week, in an attempt to bring some levity to a tense House debate over a bill that would restrict diversity, equity and inclusion on college and university campuses. 

The debate occurred Thursday, the penultimate day of a hectic legislative session. Ehardt, an Idaho Falls Republican who has long opposed DEI, said that she had received text messages from people “at the universities” who supported Senate Bill 1198. Then she addressed Statehouse reporters who were watching the debate and might want to see the messages.

“I’m gonna delete (them),” Ehardt said with a laugh. “Don’t put in the FOIA request.” 

Half an hour after the House approved the anti-DEI bill, Idaho Education News hand-delivered a public records request to Ehardt. 

Too late. The messages were gone.  

Ehardt later told EdNews that her comment “was all meant to add a little levity” on the House floor. When asked why she didn’t want reporters to see the messages, Ehardt said that the authors may not have expected their texts to be public.

“No one’s anticipating that that’s going to get shared,” she said. “Obviously, if I hadn’t said anything, nobody would have known.”

State law exempts from disclosure personal communications by a member of the Legislature, but communications related to “the conduct or administration of the public’s business” are considered public. In other words, someone who messages a lawmaker about a bill shouldn’t expect that it will remain private.

While Ehardt’s stunt was clearly meant to be funny, it raised a more serious question: Why are lawmakers allowed to destroy public records?

Unlike the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), which applies to federal agencies, the Idaho Public Records Act doesn’t have a retention provision that bars destroying records before a certain period of time. 

State agencies adhere to a schedule — created by the Idaho State Historical Society — that guides how long various types of records should be retained, and local governments set their own guidelines. But similar rules don’t apply to the Legislature. 

Lawmakers can trash their records at any time, unless someone files an official request to see them. Destroying records after they’ve been identified in a request would violate the Public Records Act, but Ehardt didn’t appear to do that in this case. 

Still, her decision to delete the texts is a good example of why the state needs more specific retention requirements, said Scott McIntosh, First Amendment committee chairman for the Idaho Press Club. 

“The decisionmaking process of state legislators is the public’s business and should be done in public,” said McIntosh, who is also opinion editor for the Idaho Statesman. “Deleting text messages cited by a lawmaker during a legislative debate is anathema to the Idaho values of open and honest government.”

Journalists and other members of the public often rely on correspondence records to shed light on government work that happens behind closed doors. Here are some recent examples from EdNews:

• Emails between West Ada School District administrators and trustees exposed internal turmoil after the district told a teacher to remove a classroom sign promoting inclusivity.
• Messages between Idaho State University President Robert Wagner and House Speaker Mike Moyle, R-Star, revealed that ISU is considering the feasibility of buying a private medical school in Meridian. 
• Public comments on a divisive bill to fund private education using tax dollars showed widespread opposition to the proposal that was ultimately signed into law. 

On Tuesday, Ehardt declined to share details on the messages, except that they were from people affiliated with multiple universities and they weren’t from students. Ehardt said she will retain EdNews’ records request, however. 

“I did scan and copy and save that for time and all posterity,” she said.

From the Idaho Education News

From the Associated Press

BY  REBECCA BOONE

BOISE, Idaho (AP) — A federal magistrate judge heard arguments Tuesday morning in a lawsuit brought by three news organizations that say Idaho prison officials are unconstitutionally hiding parts of lethal injection executions from public view. 

The Associated Press, East Idaho News and The Idaho Statesman filed the lawsuit against the director of the Idaho Department of Correction in December. They are asking U.S. Magistrate Judge Debora K. Grasham to temporarily stop the state from restricting media witnesses from viewing the actual injection of lethal chemicals in any executions that may occur before the lawsuit is resolved. 

Wendy Olson, the attorney representing the news organizations, said media witnesses play a significant role in the public’s understanding of executions. The U.S. has a history of protecting public access to executions, whether they are carried out by hanging, electrocution or other means, she said, and the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has said that access right includes the steps that are “inextricably intertwined” with the process of putting someone to death.

Idaho officials allow media witnesses to see the first step of lethal injection executions — placing an inmate on a gurney and inserting the IV lines — as well as the third step of the process, which is watching the impact the lethal drugs have on the inmate and seeing a coroner declare the inmate dead.

But Olson said the state is wrongly barring the public from seeing the second step, which is the process of actually drawing the lethal drugs into syringes and then pushing those drugs into the IV lines connected to the condemned person. Those steps are carried out in a separate room, she said, and the state has refused media witness requests to view the process via closed-circuit television. 

Tanner Smith, the attorney representing prison officials, told Grasham that when it comes to analyzing Idaho history, lethal injections shouldn’t be compared to hangings. There is no “historical right of access” to the work done in the “medication team room,” including the administration of lethal drugs, he said.

The pushing of the drugs is a “minute detail,” and the public can rely on prison officials to accurately tell them whether that process was successful, Smith said. Keeping the medication team room hidden from public view helps protect those volunteer team members from being identified and subjected to harassment or threats, he said.

Grasham seemed skeptical.

“It’s a minute detail?” she asked, later continuing, “How can the administration of the drug be anything but inextricably intertwined?”

Grasham also asked why the people in the medication team room couldn’t simply wear the same surgical garb that other execution team members use to hide their identities. Smith said they could, but they might have unique characteristics like their stature that would stand out despite face masks, gloves and head coverings. 

Grasham said she would issue a written ruling on the preliminary injunction request, but did not say when the ruling would be issued. 

Twenty-seven states authorize the death penalty, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, though some have paused executions or do not have anyone on death row. The states also vary widely on how many media witnesses they allow at executions, as well as how much of the execution process witnesses are allowed to see. 

This is not the first time The Associated Press and other news organizations have sued Idaho officials in an attempt to increase execution access. In 2012, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ordered prison officials to allow the news organizations to view the first part of lethal injection executions, including when a condemned person is brought into the execution chamber, secured to the execution gurney and the IV is inserted.

Idaho has attempted four lethal injection executions since the 1970s. Three of them were completed, but the most recent attempt, involving Thomas Eugene Creech, was aborted last year after execution team members were unable to successfully establish an IV line after eight attempts in Creech’s arms and legs. 

Lawmakers passed a new law this year that will make firing squads the state’s primary method of execution, starting next year.

From the Associated Press

From the Idaho Capital Sun

BY: KYLE PFANNENSTIEL

Idaho will become the 41st state with a media shield law, protecting sources who provide confidential information or documents to journalists.

Gov. Brad Little signed House Bill 158 into law Thursday morning, the governor’s office’s Communications Director Emily Callihan told the Idaho Capital Sun. The governor’s office plans to hold a signing ceremony with partners involved in the bill, she said. 

The Idaho Legislature unanimously passed the bill this year, following a rise in legal threats that sought to force journalists to reveal their sources. 

Idaho is one of 10 states without a journalism shield law, according to the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. 

Idaho’s new media shield law takes effect July 1.

Idaho Press Club President Melissa Davlin wrote the bill based on language in laws in Kentucky and Alabama.

“Too many Gem State newsrooms have had to spend time and resources fighting subpoenas that would force them to betray their sources’ trust under threat of fines or jail time,” she told the Idaho Capital Sun in a written statement after the Legislature passed the bill. “The Idaho Press Club is grateful that lawmakers saw the need for this change, and we thank our legislative sponsors for their help getting this to the governor’s desk. Idaho, like the rest of America, needs a strong press corps, and this shield law will help reporters focus on their work instead of costly and stressful legal proceedings.”

The bill states: “No person engaged in journalistic activities shall be compelled to disclose in any legal proceeding, trial before any court, or before any jury the source of any information procured or obtained and published in a newspaper, print publication, digital news outlet, or by a radio or television broadcasting station with which the person is engaged or employed or with which the person is connected.”

Disclosure: The Idaho Capital Sun’s journalists are members of the Idaho Press Club.

From the Idaho Capital Sun

From KTVB-TV

As Sunshine Week opened in Idaho and nationwide on Monday, March 18, 2025, Idaho Secretary of State Phil McGrane and State Controller Brandon Woolf talked with KTVB-TV about the importance of open public records and making public information in Idaho easily accessible to the public.

“You have a right to know what your government’s up to,” McGrane told KTVB reporter Joe Parris on the station’s “The 208” show.”

Said Woolf, “Obscurity is the best friend of conspiracy.” When people are left wondering what their government is hiding and what’s really going on, trust erodes and conspiracies rise, he said. Woolf advocated for “changing that culture, that mindset, to say: We’re open.”

His office does that in part through its “Transparent Idaho” (LINK: https://transparent.idaho.gov/ ) transparency site, where large amounts of state and local government financial data is available to anyone who cares to look it up. McGrane’s office is in charge of the state’s Sunshine Laws on campaign finance and lobbying registration, and is working to make that data easy to access through new tools, data visualizations, and more through the office’s Campaign Finance Sunshine Portal. (LINK: https://voteidaho.gov/campaign-finance-portal/ )

Said McGrane, “That’s what our role is, is to make this easy for the public.”

You can watch the full interview here at KTVB.com. (LINK:

https://www.ktvb.com/video/news/local/208/idaho-officials-push-for-greater-transparency-in-the-gem-state/277-bf4086d7-e7bd-400a-8521-87ab7084736f )

Sunshine Week, first launched as a national event in March of 2005, helps educate the public, journalists, lawmakers, and others on the right to know in the U.S. states and federal government. There’s more information about Sunshine Week at sunshineweek.org.

From KTVB-TV

From the Idaho Capital Sun

BY: CLARK CORBIN

The Idaho House of Representatives on Tuesday threw bipartisan, unanimous support behind a bill that would create a media shield law protecting sources who provide confidential information or documents to journalists.

Without any debate, the Idaho House voted 69-0 to pass House Bill 158. 

The bill states, “No person engaged in journalistic activities shall be compelled to disclose in any legal proceeding, trial before any court, or before any jury the source of any information procured or obtained and published in a newspaper, print publication, digital news outlet, or by a radio or television broadcasting station with which the person is engaged or employed or with which the person is connected.”

Supporters said the bill would help combat frivolous lawsuits and provide protections similar to whistleblower protections available in existing state and federal laws. 

Rep. Barbara Ehardt, an Idaho Falls Republican who co-sponsored the bill, said without a media shield law, journalists could be forced to reveal the identity of confidential sources or risk being found in contempt of court, fined or even jailed. 

“The only thing right now protecting or stopping a journalist from revealing their sources is their own personal ethics,” Ehardt said. 

“Many have gone to jail,” Ehardt added. “They’ve been sent to jail, and they sat there at their own (volation) trying to protect the sources. And at some point, that’s not right.” 

The bill’s other co-sponsor, Rep. Marco Erickson, R-Idaho Falls, said Idaho is one of 10 states without a shield law protecting sources who provide confidential information to journalists.

House Bill 158 heads next to the Idaho Senate for consideration. If a majority of members of the Idaho Senate vote to pass the bill, it would head to Gov. Brad Little for final consideration. Once a bill reaches his desk, Little may sign it into law, veto it or allow it to become law without his signature.

Disclosure: Idaho Capital Sun journalists are members of the Idaho Press Club, which drafted and advocated for the passage of the media shield law bill.

From the Idaho Capital Sun

From the Idaho Statesman

By Carolyn Komatsoulis

An Idaho House committee on Wednesday advanced a bill that would protect journalists from having to identify sources or turn over notes and other unpublished material during legal proceedings.

Idaho is one of 10 states that doesn’t have a so-called shield law on the books, according to the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. House Bill 158, which now heads to the floor with a do-pass recommendation, could change that.

“What we have in front of us is a suggested law that would protect sources. Sources, not journalists,” said co-sponsor Rep. Barbara Ehardt, R-Idaho Falls. “Idaho’s media outlets are facing an increasingly growing number of subpoenas.”

The U.S. Supreme Court, in Branzburg v. Hayes, ruled that requiring journalists to testify to grand juries and reveal confidential information wasn’t a First Amendment infringement on freedom of the press, according to Oyez, an archive of cases.

Ben Olson, the co-owner and publisher of the Sandpoint Reader, has personal experience with subpoenas, he told the House Judiciary, Rules and Administration Committee. In 2018, he published an article identifying a man who was distributing racist propaganda. Olson said there were robocalls calling him a cancer, he said, amid a campaign of harassment.

The FCC wanted to fine Scott Rhodes millions of dollars for the malicious robocalls, according to previous Statesman reporting. One of the calls that mentioned Olson was included in the FCC’s complaint, and he was then subpoenaed by Rhodes, he said.

“It was an attempt to further harass me and potentially harass the sources that spoke with me,” Olson said. “We have a staff of three people, myself included, and we don’t have the means or the time to fight frivolous subpoenas.”

He was lucky, Olson told the committee Wednesday. A lawyer represented him pro bono and the subpoena was quashed.

Others haven’t been so fortunate.

Nate Sunderland, the editor of East Idaho News, said he was forced by subpoena to testify in a defamation case between an attorney and a businessman. The attorney had provided a quote about a criminal case to the outlet, Sunderland said, and the businessman assumed it was about him.

East Idaho News spent almost two years and a lot of money fighting the subpoena, but ultimately lost.

“As journalists, we believe the conversations between sources and reporters are private, until the decision is made to publish on-the-record statements in an article or broadcast,” Sunderland said. “We need to ensure that our sources and our conversations are inherently private.”

From the Idaho Statesman

From the Idaho Capital Sun

BY: CLARK CORBIN

A new bill introduced in the Idaho Legislature on Wednesday afternoon seeks to protect sources who provide journalists with confidential information.

On Wednesday afternoon, the House Judiciary, Rules and Administration Committee voted unanimously to introduce the new bill, which would create a media shield law in Idaho.

Reps. Marco Erickson and Barbara Ehardt, both R-Idaho Falls, sponsored the bill. 

Erickson said Idaho is one of 10 states in the United States that do not have a shield law protecting sources who provide confidential information to journalists. 

“No person engaged in journalistic activities shall be compelled to disclose in any legal proceeding, trial before any court, or before any jury the source of any information procured or obtained and published in a newspaper, print publication, digital news outlet, or by a radio or television broadcasting station with which the person is engaged or employed or with which the person is connected,” the bill states.

The bill also applies to unpublished information, notes or communications obtained through the newsgathering process.

Idaho Press Club President Melissa Davlin said the bill protects news organizations and sources alike. 

“The First Amendment protects the right to a free press – our ability to report and hold the powerful accountable, but it is much more difficult to do so if our sources cannot trust that information they give us off-the-record or anonymously or all of our communications are going to be secure and safe,” Davlin said in an interview Wednesday. 

Last year, EastIdahoNews.com was subpoenaed and forced to play a private, off-the-record conversation between a reporter and a source in court. Erickson and Ehardt approached the news organization looking to help, and Davlin got involved as president of the Idaho Press Club.

Also last year, Boise attorney Steven Wieland attempted to subpoena BoiseDev for access to an email referenced in a 2023 story about a lawsuit involving ownership of a hotel. Wieland, on behalf of his client, threatened to ask a judge to hold BoiseDev in contempt of court. Contempt charges can carry fines up to $5,000 and jail time of up to 30 days.

After serving the subpoena, Wieland sent an email to BoiseDev reporter Margaret Carmel on the matter.

“Everything is okay, we’re just looking for your communications with Hitendra Chokshi, his son, and others who might have been working with them,” Wieland wrote. “That includes call recordings. We think it’s relevant to determining (sic) what their purpose was in bringing this lawsuit in the first place. We don’t need your communications with me (for obvious reasons).”

After more than a month of wrangling, BoiseDev’s legal counsel in the matter illustrated to Wieland that he could obtain the email sought from other parties, and he eventually tabled the matter. Fighting the subpoena cost BoiseDev several thousand dollars and extensive staff time.

Idaho Press Club president says there’s been increase in subpoenaing news organizations in the Gem State

Davlin reached out to the nonprofit Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press for resources and support, and she based Idaho’s bill on media shield laws that have been in place in Alabama and Kentucky for decades.

Davlin has been involved with the Idaho Press Club for 12 years, and said she has seen a significant recent increase in people and organizations subpoenaing news organizations in an attempt to gain access to private, confidential information that sources share. 

Davlin also said she has had personal experience with anonymous sources who sought to provide documents for a news story but backed out after becoming worried their confidentiality might not be guaranteed. 

“In the last year I have had more newsrooms and more reporters ask me for help quashing subpoenas than the entire time (I have served on the Idaho Press Club board of directors),” Davlin said. “It has come up in multiple parts of the state and multiple newsrooms, so it’s not like there’s one bad actor who is sending out subpoenas.”

Often, Davlin said it is small, independent local news organizations that are hurt the most by subpoenas seeking the disclosure of confidential information because they do not have the budget to go to court or have an attorney on staff.

Although no legislators voted against introducing the new media shield bill, several legislators asked questions Wednesday about how the bill works or whether it is necessary. 

Rep. Chris Mathias, D-Boise, said he would like additional information about whether the bill would protect illegitimate organizations that are set up to look and act like legitimate news organizations.

Introducing the bill clears the way for it to return to the House Judiciary, Rules and Administration Committee for a full public hearing. 

The new media shield bill will be assigned a number and publicly posted on the Idaho Legislature’s website after it is read across the desk on the floor of the Idaho House, likely on Thursday.

Disclosure: The Idaho Capital Sun’s journalists are members of the Idaho Press Club.

Editor’s note: This story was updated at 11:48 p.m. on Feb. 7, 2025, to include information on a subpoena received by BoiseDev.

From the Idaho Capital Sun

From the Associated Press

by REBECCA BOONE

BOISE — Attorneys for a man charged with murder in connection with the killings of four University of Idaho students are asking a judge to throw out most of the evidence in the case because they say it all hinges on an unconstitutional genetic investigation process.

Bryan Kohberger’s defense team also contends that the search warrants in the case were tainted by police misconduct. A two-day hearing on the matter started Thursday morning, and much of it has been closed to the public. If they are successful, it could throw a major wrench in the prosecution’s case before trial starts in August.

Kohberger is charged with four counts of murder in the deaths of Ethan Chapin, Xana Kernodle, Madison Mogen and Kaylee Goncalves, who were killed in the early morning of Nov. 13, 2022, at a rental home near campus in Moscow, Idaho. When asked to enter a plea last year, Kohberger stood silent, prompting a judge to enter a not-guilty plea on his behalf. Prosecutors have said they will seek the death penalty if Kohberger is convicted.

Kohberger’s attorneys say law enforcement violated his constitutional rights when they used a process called Investigative Genetic Genealogy, or IGG, to identify possible suspects.

“There would be no investigation into him without that original constitutional violation,” attorneys Jay Weston Logsdon and Ann Taylor wrote in a court filing. They later continued, “Without IGG, there is no case, no request for his phone records, surveillance of his parents’ home, no DNA taken from the garbage out front. Because the IGG analysis is the origin of this matter, everything in the affidavit should be excised.”

The IGG process often starts when DNA found at the scene of a crime doesn’t yield any results through standard law enforcement databases. When that happens, investigators may look at all the variations, or single nucleotide polymorphisms, that are in the DNA sample. Those SNPs, or “snips,” are then uploaded to a genealogy database like GEDmatch or FamilyTreeDNA to look for possible relatives of the person whose DNA was found at the scene.

In Kohberger’s case, investigators said they found “touch DNA,” or trace DNA, on the sheath of a knife that was found in the home where the students were fatally stabbed. The FBI used the IGG process on that DNA and the information identified Kohberger as a possible suspect.

Latah County Prosecutor Bill Thompson and the rest of the prosecution team say there is nothing unconstitutional about the use of IGG, noting that Kohberger’s relatives voluntarily provided their own DNA to a genetic genealogy service. They’ve also argued in court filings that case law is clear: Defendants have no reasonable right to privacy for DNA that is left at the scene of a crime.

The defense team also says that once Kohberger was identified as a possible suspect, law enforcement officers either purposely or recklessly lied or omitted crucial information when they asked the court to issue search warrants for his apartment, his parents’ house, his car, his cellphone and even for his own DNA. They want all of that evidence kept out of the trial as well.

Specific details about the alleged police misconduct are hidden from public view, however; 4th District Judge Steven Hippler has kept most of those court filings, along with many of the court documents on the IGG evidence, under seal. Hippler ordered part of the hearing to be held behind closed doors and said the privacy was necessary to prevent potential jurors from being “tainted” by hearing about any evidence that might not be allowed in trial.

On Wednesday, a coalition of news organizations including The Associated Press asked the judge to reconsider the secrecy.

“In any criminal case, I would submit that it’s of extreme public interest to know whether a law enforcement officer sworn to tell the truth … made reckless or false statements” during an investigation, the news organizations’ attorney, Wendy Olson, said during a hearing on Wednesday. The U.S. Supreme Court has found that the public and the press have a First Amendment right to open court proceedings, she said, and that open courts also help to protect the rights of the accused.

“Openness and transparency are more important than ever in maintaining and restoring confidence in our government institutions,” Olson said.

The judge was unswayed.

“I don’t think much has changed in terms of the need to protect the jury pool here, given the intense media scrutiny that has and continues to follow this case,” Hippler said. “We will be challenged under the best of circumstances in obtaining a jury that has not been overly exposed to this … and in particular, exposed to evidence that may not come into this trial.”

The judge said no one would be allowed into the courtroom but that the open portions of the hearing would be livestreamed from the court’s YouTube page.

From the Associated Press