In re Grand Jury Proceedings; Joshua Wolf, No. 06-90064 (N.D. Cal. Aug. 1, 2006)
Status: After being jailed for 226 days for contempt, blogger was released after agreeing to post material on his web site

A protest on July 8, 2005 in San Francisco tied to a meeting of world leaders in Scotland, turned violent, with a police officer assaulted and suffering a fractured skull. There was also an alleged “potential attempted arson” of a San Francisco city police car. Since the police car had been purchased with federal funds, a federal grand jury began investigating whether a federal crime had been committed. During the course of its investigation, federal law enforcement learned that videoblogger and freelance journalist Joshua Wolf had videotaped portions of the protest, and posted portions of his footage on his website and sold a video clip to Indymedia, NBC, and television stations KTVU and KRON. On Feb. 1, 2006, Wolf was served with a grand jury subpoena ordering him to appear before the grand jury with all his footage. Wolf refused, and on Aug. 1, 2006, the District Court for the Northern District of California ordered that he be held in civil contempt and jailed for his refusal to produce the footage that had not already been shown. Wolf appealed the district court’s contempt order in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which affirmed the contempt order on Sept. 8, 2006. Wolf v. U.S., No. 06-16403, 2006 WL 2631398 (9th Cir. Sept. 8, 2006) (O’Scannlain, Graber, Clifton, JJ.). On April 3, 2007, Wolf was released after he agreed to post the video online, thus making it available to prosecutors, as long as he was not required to testify before the grand jury.

Links and Court Documents:
Court documents available at http://www.medialaw.org/Content/NavigationMenu/Hot_Topics/Reporters_Privilege/Wolf/Wolf.htm