Word: popkin
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When the press and the public returned to the courtroom, Garrity's face was obscured by a copy of the Crimson transcript. Placing it aside, he announced his decision: Popkin was found in contempt and sentenced to a maximum of 18 months in prison, or until he agreed to answer the unanswered inquiries...
...confinement was not to be punishment, Garrity stressed, but a "sanction designed to compel answers" from Popkin. He added that Popkin had "the key in your pocket" to end the sentence at any time by consenting to provide the information...
...merry-go-round took one more turn, to the First Circuit Court of Appeals on the 15th floor of the same building. Briefs submitted by attorneys for Popkin and for the government both relied heavily upon the issue of a scholar's First Amendment privilege to confidential sources; Popkin's brief held, with supporting affidavits from several fellow scholars and previous court decisions, that such a right is vital to academic freedom and progress, while the government's denied that any such right existed...
...Appeals Court's decision, entered May 3, affirmed part of the lower court's judgment and vacated others. "Even if the questions put to (Popkin) have not been demonstrated to be relevant to the grand jury's inquiry, this would not justify his refusals to answer," the court wrote. And it decided further that "the reason for the claimed (scholarly) privilege lies not in the importance of protecting the officials and other sources per se but in the importance of preserving the flow of their communications via scholars to the public domain. This underlying rationale falls short of immunizing...
Thus, the court ordered that Popkin answer the three questions dealing with the names of persons interviewed who gave him knowledge of the participants in the Pentagon Papers...