Saturday, July 26, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

Letter demands newspaper retract statements

The Review-Journal received a letter Friday demanding that the newspaper retract statements made in an opinion column about three Nevada Supreme Court justices.

Las Vegas attorney Dominic Gentile wrote the letter on behalf of Justices Bob Rose, Miriam Shearing and Deborah Agosti.

"We're not going to retract," Review-Journal Editor Thomas Mitchell said. "This was an opinion column by Vin Suprynowicz. It was a fair characterization of what he heard and his conclusions on what transpired."

Mark Hinueber, general counsel for the Review-Journal, said the letter is a procedural step required under Nevada law before filing a defamation lawsuit. Mitchell said a process server delivered the letter to him.

Suprynowicz's column, which ran Sunday, discussed the Nevada Supreme Court's controversial decision in the case filed by Gov. Kenny Guinn against the state Legislature.

The court's July 10 decision, aimed at ending the budget impasse in the Legislature, temporarily set aside the provision in the state Constitution that requires a vote of at least two-thirds of the members of each house to approve tax increases. The 6-1 decision gave legislators the authority to proceed under simple majority rule.

According to Suprynowicz's column, he had lunch on July 1 with a retired Nevada judge who told him: "The fix is in. Guinn went to Rose and Shearing on the Supreme Court some time ago and got their agreement that they'll impose the tax hikes. Agosti is wavering, but it'll probably be 6-to-1.

"This seemed a tad paranoid to me then," Suprynowicz wrote. "Now we know. The judge called it right."

Later in the column, Suprynowicz wrote, "And so the thin veneer that had still duped many of us into believing we had a government of law, and that our political leaders were not bought-and-paid-for shills of the gaming industry and the big government unions, has now been stripped aside ..."

According to Gentile's letter, the column libeled his clients.

"That such a statement is an accusation and allegation of bribery and corruption in its common meaning in the present day is irrefutable," the attorney wrote.

Gentile, who has represented media clients in the past, could not be reached for comment Friday. Attempts to reach Shearing and Agosti for comment also were unsuccessful.

In a telephone interview Friday afternoon, Rose said Suprynowicz's column made "false and malicious allegations."

"The Review-Journal was irresponsible in even printing those allegations without doing any checking or investigating," the justice said.

Rose said the column specifically accused him of committing a crime. "When you're fixing a judge, it is a crime," he said.

The justice said no one from the Review-Journal contacted him before the column appeared in the newspaper.

He said the Review-Journal "should certainly be willing to identify the retired judge" who claims Guinn met with justices before they ruled on the tax issue. Guinn filed his case against the Legislature on the morning of July 1.

"I never had any discussion with Governor Guinn or members of his staff concerning this issue. Period. Amen," Rose said.

Rose said he has a friendly relationship with the governor, but the two men are not close friends. The justice said he has not spoken with Guinn, other than to say hello, since December.

Suprynowicz said he did not contact the justices before writing his column because he has learned from experience that judges do not comment on cases that may come before them.

"The chances that they'd give me a substantive comment were minimal, zero," he said.

Agosti, the court's chief justice, announced July 1 that she appreciated the high public interest in the case filed by Guinn but hoped "for a public understanding of the court's inability to comment publicly upon pending matters."

In Gentile's letter, he cites a portion of the Society of Professional Journalists' code of ethics that states, "Journalists should diligently seek out subjects of news stories to give them the opportunity to respond to allegations of wrongdoing."

"He was writing a column," Mitchell said. "He wasn't writing a news story. The procedural guidelines for opinion writing are not the same as they are for news writing."

Mitchell denied that the column accused anyone of committing a crime, just of being politicians. He said the column, which carried the headline "The fix was in," suggested the Supreme Court's decision "was a foregone conclusion" and accused the justices of "serving special interests rather than the public."

"If they're going to be in the public spotlight, they should be able to withstand the legitimate criticism," the editor said.

Hinueber described Gentile's demand letter as "an outrageous attempt to chill the Review-Journal's aggressive, thorough and fair reporting on the Nevada Supreme Court and to discover confidential sources of the newspaper."

The attorney said a Nevada Supreme Court decision protects journalists in the state from being forced to reveal the identity of their sources.

According to a U.S. Supreme Court decision, public officials must show that a journalist acted with actual malice in order to succeed with a libel case.

Suprynowicz said he does not know the Nevada Supreme Court justices and has no malice toward them.

Suprynowicz said Mitchell and editorial page editor John Kerr both edited his column before it was published. He described his source as a person of high character.

"I'm glad I wrote the column," Suprynowicz said. "I think we need a public discussion of this issue."