Attorneys: Judge overstepped authority ordering students to delete recordings

Regional News

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A judge who was a finalist for a spot on the Arizona Supreme Court gave a group of journalism students a real-life lesson in prior restraint on March 3.

Judge Pamela Gates of Maricopa County Superior Court ordered the students to erase recordings they made during a sentencing proceeding, an order First Amendment lawyers say went over the line.

Attorney Dan Barr, who practices First Amendment law, said the judge’s order was prior restraint, which she cannot do.

“Whether or not she tells you ‘you can record’ or not, once you’ve recorded, she can’t tell you what to do with it,” Barr said.

Since the recordings had already been made when the judge said that prior recording must be deleted, she was preventing the quotes and information from those recordings to be used for publication.

Student reporters from Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication were on a class assignment in Gates’ court covering the sentencing of Rebekah Mellon, who pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in the 2012 shooting death of her husband, Donald.