Judge orders newspaper to reveal name of commenter
TOPEKA -- A Topeka newspaper has been ordered to identify the person who posted a comment on its website about a story on a murder trial. At the time, the commenter apparently was serving on the jury for that same trial.
Shawnee County District Judge Steven Ebberts last week denied a request by The Topeka Capital-Journal to quash a subpoena seeking the name, address and Internet Protocol address of a poster who goes by the pseudonym “BePrepared.”
That person is believed to have been a juror in the first-degree murder trial of Anceo D. Stovall, 27, who was being tried on 11 charges that included the shooting death of Natalie Gibson and the wounding of her partner, Lori Allison, during a robbery last year.
Court records indicate BePrepared accessed a July 19 news story while the person and other jurors were deliberating Stovall’s fate two days later.
The jury convicted Stovall on July 24 of aggravated robbery, found him not guilty of the burglary of a Jeep, and was unable to reach verdicts on nine other charges, including murder.
Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2012/10/31/3894994/judge-orders-newspaper-to-reveal.html#storylink=cpy
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