Vanessa Leggett, 33, an author from Austin, Texas, was found in contempt of court July 20 by U.S. District judge Melinda Harmon in a close court hearing in Houston for refusing to turn over her research notes to a grand jury investigating a murder case.

She has been held in a Harris County jail without bail since then. Leggett, who is appealing her contempt citation in the federal courts, could remain in jail for up to 18 months under current law.

"I just feel like I'm doing what I have to do to protect my First Amendment right to freedom of the press," the author said before surrendering to authorities, "I feel like what they are doing is wrong."

Leggett had been working on a book about the April 16, 1997, murder of Doris Angleton, 36, who was shot to death in her home in Houston's exclusive River Oaks neighborhood. Angleton was the wife of millionaire Robert Angleton, an ex-bookie and cop informant. He was later accused of arranging the slaying through his brother, Roger Angleton. Both men were jailed on capital murder charges. Roger Angleton later committed suicide while in jail.

Although acquitted of murder in August 1998, Robert Angleton has since become the focus of a federal grand jury investigation.

In preparing for the 1998 trial, the local Houston prosecutor obtained a subpoena for the notes and tapes of an interview Leggett had conducted with Roger Angleton while in jail awaiting trial.

In a negotiated deal with state prosecutors, Leggett agreed to turn over copies of the notes and tapes. Leggett's attorney, Michael DeGuerin who negotiated the deal recently disclosed that the district attorney's office in Houston has already given federal officials the copies of Leggett's notes and tapes from her interview with Roger Angleton. But now federal authorities want "all the material she has, all of her research archives over the last four years" concern ing Doris Angleton's slaying.

He noted that Leggett now regrets cooperating with the district attorney's office in 1998 and has decided to stop providing materials to investigators.

Since 1973 the U.S. attorney general has been required to approve every federal subpoena issued to a reporter as well as every request by federal prosecutors to arrest a reporter.

According to an article in the August 1 Washington Post, "The Justice Department does not consider Leggett a bona fide journalist and does not believe she is protected by rules governing reporters."

The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and the Society of Professional Journalists have filed a brief on Leggett's behalf with the appeals court. They argued such government actions threaten the independence of a free press guaranteed in the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

The Justice Department last jailed a reporter in 1991, when four South Carolina journalists were locked up for eight hours when they refused to testify at the corruption trial of a state senator.  
 
 
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