By Terry Greene Sterling
Special to the Washington Post
Saturday, October 20, 2007

PHOENIX, Oct. 19 -- The two owners of the nation's largest chain of alternative weekly newspapers were arrested and jailed late Thursday after publishing the contents of a grand jury subpoena seeking, among other information, details on each and every reader who logged on to a Phoenix newspaper Web site since 2004.

This afternoon, after local residents and national First Amendment advocates voiced outrage over what they viewed as an effort to intimidate a newspaper critical of a local official, Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas announced that no charges would be filed against the executives or their reporters and that a special prosecutor hired to investigate the newspaper for possible criminal violations is being fired.

The arrests of Michael Lacey, 59, executive editor of Village Voice Media, and Jim Larkin, 58, the chain's chief executive, followed an Oct. 18 article that appeared under their bylines in Phoenix New Times, the company's Phoenix newspaper. The article included a copy of the grand jury subpoena that had been issued in August seeking information about reports the newspaper had published concerning Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio's real estate holdings.

Arpaio, sometimes called "the toughest sheriff in America," had long been the focus of Phoenix New Times articles, including revelations of unusual deaths in the sheriff's jails. The article on his real estate holdings included a notation of the sheriff's home address.

The county attorney hired Dennis Wilenchik as a special prosecutor to investigate whether listing a peace officer's home address on the Internet is a crime. Lacey and Larkin have said that the address came from public records.

In addition to reporters' notes and other documents on the internal workings of the newspaper, the grand jury subpoena demanded "the Internet Protocol address of anyone who accessed the Phoenix New Times Website from January 1, 2004 to the present," and the site users visited "prior to coming to the paper's website."

The subpoena also told the newspaper executives that disclosure of any grand jury proceeding, including receipt of the subpoena, was a crime. When the newspaper published an article about it, the two executives were arrested.

In dismissing the charges and promising to fire the special prosecutor, Thomas said, "It has become clear to me the investigation has gone in a direction I would not have authorized."