Journal Staff Report

The Cortez Journal did not violate the terms of a gag order issued Sept. 27 in a case involving District Attorney Mike Green, a Montezuma County judge has ruled.

The case involves Green’s former girlfriend, Catherine McKenzie, and her husband, Kaan Clark. The two are accused of selling $25 worth of metamphetamine to an undercover informant in March 1998 at the Warsaw Inn, where they worked. McKenzie contends that an obsessed and jealous Green was involved in an attempt to frame her and, in briefs filed by her attorney with the court, said she had evidence that Green had sent the Montezuma County sheriff’s department a memo asking them to stop her frequently for alleged traffic violations, as well as letters from Green that would support her contention.

The prosecution, which is being handled by the Seventh Judicial District in Montrose because of Green’s conflict of interest, had sought to suppress evidence of Green’s possible involvement as irrelevant to the drug case.

On Sept. 27, at a hearing on several motions related to the case, Deputy District Attorney Susanne Ross, apparently surprised by the presence of Journal reporter David Long, asked Judge Christopher Leroi for a "gag order" forbidding the newspaper to publish anything regarding Green’s alleged role. Leroi granted a temporary 10-day order prohibiting publication of any new material revealed at the hearing while inviting the parties involved to submit written briefs on the issue.

Long wrote an article about the case for the Sept. 30 Journal, using information obtained previously from court documents. When the hearing resumed on Oct. 1, Ross said she believed the paper had violated the gag order and filed an oral motion to have both Long and the Journal cited for contempt of court. She also accused the paper of being part of a conspiracy to ruin Green’s reputation.

But Leroi’s ruling, issued Oct. 2, found no basis for a contempt citation.

"This court has carefully reviewed the newspaper article published by the Cortez Journal on September 30, 1999," Leroi wrote in denying the motion for contempt sanctions. "This Court finds that the information in the contents of that article appear to have been derived by reporter David Grant Long prior to the hearing on September 27, 1999. ... It appears that Mr. Long was extremely careful and conscientious in not reporting any of the new information learned at that hearing."