Court overturns book store order

 

By Steven K. Paulson

Apr 8, 2002 | DENVER (AP) -- The Colorado Supreme Court refused to order a bookstore to turn over its sales records to police on Monday, overturning a lower court decision demanding the records as part of a drug investigation.

In a 53-page ruling, the court said police erred when they went after the records to establish which books a suspect had purchased.

The First Amendment and the state Constitution "protect an individual's fundamental right to purchase books anonymously, free from governmental interference," the court ruled.

The decision overturns a Denver district judge who ordered Tattered Cover Book Store owner Joyce Meskis to tell police who purchased two books on drug manufacturing from her store.

Meskis argued that the order violated her customers' First Amendment rights.

Attorneys for police and prosecutors said the investigators had no other way to prove who owned the book, which they said is critical to their investigation.

Police sought the records after finding an envelope from the bookstore outside a mobile home they had raided. Inside the home were a methamphetamine lab and the drug-making how-to books.

The envelope was printed with an invoice number and the trailer's address, but no name. Police found no fingerprints on the book and obtained a search warrant to find out who ordered it. The court said Monday that the search warrant should never have been issued.

The Tattered Cover, one of the country's largest independent bookstores, was assisted in the case by the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression.

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