Tattered Cover owner Joyce Meskis is beginning to pick up support from a number of quarters as she fights a search warrant from Denver's Metro Gang Task Force that seeks to seize book sales records. The force believes these records will legally connect a suspected drug dealer to a methamphetamine lab. Meskis obtained a temporary restraining order blocking enforcement of the warrant until May 4, when the Denver District Court will hear the Tattered Cover's request for a preliminary injunction.
The American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression is helping to underwrite the Tattered Cover's court costs and is also preparing a friend of the court brief for the May 4 hearing. The Association of American Publishers has also signed on to the brief, and AAP president Pat Schr der told PW, "Joyce Meskis is not only a personal friend of mine, she is a great friend of the First Amendment." In addition, both of Denver's newspapers have written editorials supporting Meskis's position and have called for the warrant to be withdrawn.
The Tattered Cover became involved in the investigation after a drug raid on a house found a methamphetamine laboratory, two books on how to make methamphetamines ( "crystal meth") and a shipping envelope containing an invoice, credit card number and customer number showing that the books had been mailed from the Tattered Cover. In refusing to turn over the records, Meskis told PW that "when a person buys a book, their expectation is that the reader and writer will come together in the privacy of their own home. My customers would be appalled if the Tattered Cover revealed their bookstore purchases either publicly or to the government without their permission." Meskis added, "My concern is on behalf of my customers. Their privacy rights need to be protected. The First Amendment insures one of the most precious freedoms we have in our democratic society: the freedom to speak, write and publish and the freedom to read constitutionally protected materials."
The Tattered Cover case is similar to the litigation that grew out of the subp nas that Kenneth Starr issued to Kramerbooks and a Washington, D.C., branch of Barnes & Noble to obtain Monica Lewinsky's purchase records. That case ended when Lewinsky agreed to turn over the records in exchange for immunity. But as the ABFFE has noted, the case established a legal precedent when Federal District Court Judge Norma Holloway Johnson declared that prosecutors must weigh the potential chilling effect of their demand for bookstore records.
