A Powerful Shield   

THE DAY AFTER the Philadelphia Inquirer published a story on a killer's confession in a five-year-old murder case, a subpoena arrived demanding reporter Nancy Phillips' notes. Defense lawyers insisted the notes could explain a lot about the motive for the confession.
In Phillips' presence, private investigator Len Jenoff told the prosecutor in a New Jersey diner in April 2000 that Rabbi Fred Neulander had hired him to kill his wife, Carol. The prominent rabbi was charged in his wife's murder in 1998, but Jenoff's confession strengthened the prosecution's case enormously.
Neulander's attorneys charged Phillips with blurring the line between reporter and participant, arguing that she acted as an "agent" of the prosecution when she encouraged and witnessed Jenoff's confession. The lawyers claim Jenoff had been overcome by the reporter's "Svengalian presence and charm" and confessed to impress her. When she wrote a first-person account of her relationship with Jenoff on May 7, the lawyers say she waived her reporter's privilege to protect her notes.
But Phillips had a powerful weapon: the 1933 New Jersey Shield Law. It's one of the strongest in the nation when it comes to protecting a reporter's right not to turn over notes--even stronger than the one enacted in Pennsylvania, where the Inquirer is located.
There is an exception. In this case, Neulander faces the death penalty, and the Sixth Amendment protecting a criminal defendant can trump press protection under the First Amendment. But a New Jersey judge decided the information could be found elsewhere and ruled last September that giving the defense the right to rummage through Phillips' notes might cause more harm than good.
"When it is remembered that there is no way to know if she has even one single written note on the subject of Jenoff's motivation for coming forward," wrote Judge Linda G. Rosenzweig, "the benefit, if any, to Neulander from compelled disclosure is dwarfed by the enormity of harm that would result to the freedom of the press and to the policies underlying the shield law."