Texas Tech University Press -- Rights in the Balance

B O O K S
Click for larger image 07/2008. 256 pages. 18 b/w photos. 978-0-89672-626-0 $40.00 cloth "Mark Scherer’s groundbreaking study of the nation’s most enduring legal conflict between the claims of free speech and those of fair trial should be read by all—most importantly, by the general public. From his depiction of the gruesome and tragic murders of a family in the tiny town of Sutherland, Nebraska, to the argument of a great case in the United States Supreme Court, Scherer brings to life the real people as well as the cosmic issues involved." —Floyd Abrams, author of Speaking Freely: Trials of the First Amendment Coming soon: online ordering! In the meantime, please call 800.832.4042 or 806.742.2982 to order.		Rights in the Balance Free Press, Fair Trial, and Nebraska Press Association v. Stuart By Mark R. Scherer Foreword by James W. Hewitt On a horrific night in October 1975, Erwin Simants brutally murdered six members of the Henry Kellie family in tiny Sutherland, Nebraska. Massive media attention to the grisly story soon spawned a historic collision between two of the most cherished American constitutional protections—the First Amendment’s guarantee of a free press and the Sixth Amendment’s guarantee of a criminal defendant’s right to a fair trial before an impartial jury. Rights in the Balance is the story of the complex legal battles set in motion that tragic night on the western Nebraska plains. In juxtaposition to the criminal prosecution of Erwin Simants, Mark Scherer traces the Nebraska Press Association’s battle to overturn a gag order imposed on the media by state court judges. Prohibited from publishing certain details about the crimes and the Simants prosecution, the association set its own arduous legal course that would lead ultimately to the U.S. Supreme Court and the landmark ruling issued in Nebraska Press Association v. Stuart. The decision, one of the most closely followed in American constitutional history, remains one of the high court’s most significant statements and controlling precedents on the troublesome and recurring conflict between the rights of free press and fair trial. Balancing the nuances of myriad legal considerations against the very human dimensions of both the constitutional litigations and the Simants prosecution, Scherer offers up a narrative accessible not only to communications and legal specialists and scholars but also the interested general public. "Unlike Truman Capote, who wrote of the similar extermination of a Kansas family in his classic In Cold Blood, Scherer spends little time in psychoanalyzing Simants and his background. Instead, his focus is almost exclusively on the lawyers, both on the prosecution and defense, on the judge who struggled to make sure that Simants could be tried as fairly as possible in a community where his defects were well known, and on the members of Nebraska’s media and their attorneys, who viewed the overturning of gag orders on the media as virtually a holy crusade." —James W. Hewitt, from the foreword Mark R. Scherer is associate professor of history at the University of Nebraska–Omaha. A former practicing attorney, Scherer has argued cases in the supreme courts of Nebraska and Ohio as well as in many federal district and circuit courts. He is also the author of Imperfect Victories: The Legal Tenacity of the Omaha Tribe, 1945–1995.

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