Reporter Zachary Siegel held in contempt of court and arrested after recording trial

Freelance journalist Zachary Siegel was held in criminal contempt of court and arrested on Oct. 2, 2018, while covering a high-profile murder trial in Chicago, Illinois. The judge overseeing the trial said that Siegel had recorded part of the trial, in violation of the judge’s decorum order, and ordered him held in jail on a $100 bond.

On Oct. 2, Siegel was one of a number of journalists in attendance for the murder trial of Jason Van Dyke, a former Chicago police officer charged with murder in connection with the 2014 shooting of Laquan McDonald, a black teenager. Siegel, a freelance science journalist, was on assignment for Undark, an online magazine about science journalism funded through the Knight Science Journalism program at MIT. Siegel was working on a feature story about Laurence Miller, a police psychologist who often testifies as an expert witness for the defense in trials involving police use of force.

Shortly after Miller’s testimony began, judge Vincent Gaughan spotted Siegel recording the testimony and stopped the trial. After questioning Siegel, judge Gaughan ordered that he be held in “direct criminal contempt” for violating the judge’s earlier decorum order. Gaughan’s decorum order allowed a defined media pool to record the trial proceedings and then share the footage with other journalists, but prohibited individual journalists (like Siegel) from recording parts of the trial on their own. Siegel was removed from court and taken to jail.

Video recorded by ABC 7 (which was allowed to film the proceedings) shows Gaughan questioning Siegel.

“Take your hands out of your pocket,” Gaughan scolds Siegel. “All right, state your name. Get up here!”

Gaughan asks Siegel if he was recording testimony (Siegel says he was) and if he knew that recording testimony was a violation of the decorum order (Siegel says he did not).

Gaughan then orders that the person sitting next to Siegel be brought up to the front of the court.

“Before I ask him whether he was sitting next to you when the decorum order was read, I want you to think about your answer, all right?” Gaughan tells Siegel. “Did you see and hear my deputy read my decorum order in this courtroom?”

“Yes,” Siegel says.

“All right, take him into custody,” Gaughan says. “I find you in direct contempt of court.”

Later, Siegel was brought back before judge Gaughan for a brief hearing on the criminal contempt charge.

Gaughan told Siegel to appear at a sentencing hearing on Oct. 31 and ordered him held on a $1,000 D-bond. A D-bond requires that a defendant raise 10% of its amount (in this case, $100) in order to make bail.

Siegel was released from jail after other journalists covering the trial took up a collection to raise $100 for his bail.

Tom Zeller, Jr., the editor in chief of Undark magazine, told Freedom of the Press Foundation that the judge’s decision to hold Siegel in contempt of court was inappropriate.

“Whatever the overall nature or purpose of the judge’s ‘decorum order,’ the decision to arrest a reporter for recording testimony during a highly publicized trial — and one in which other members of the press were permitted to record freely — would seem both absurd and arbitrary on its face,” he said. “If the judge’s goal was to intimidate other working journalists, it will not work.”