The Californian newspaper Ventura County Star has become the first web site to be subpoenaed to provide information about people that visited its site. Defense attorneys for Diana Haun, who was convicted on September 28 of conspiracy kidnapping and murder of her lover’s wife Sherri Daly as a human sacrifice birthday present. The sentencing phase of Haun’s trial starts today.
The trial of husband Michael Dally – an alleged co- conspirator – starts on November 24. Obvious question of privacy are raised by the case regarding the discourse between newspaper and their readers. The Ventura’s editor Timothy Gallagher has said the attorneys have no more right to unpublished web information than they do to unpublished letters to the editor. Jurors in the trial have been bused in from Santa Barbara County to avoid using jurors ‘contaminated’ by the heavy local press coverage, which led one of the defense attorney to show his lack of understanding of the scope of the web: the internet site stretches beyond the newspaper’s circulation area in Ventura County, possibly contaminating jury pools in Santa Barbara County, said Len Newcomb, an investigator for defense attorney James Farley.
