There was an obit printed last weekend in the Trib that sent me into the paper's morgue for background -- not the electronic archives, but the files downstairs that contain thousands of folders stuffed with old, yellowed clippings.

The obit was for Jerome C. "Jerry" Gatto, of Salt Lake City, who spent time in federal prison for his guilty pleas on charges of bilking a bunch of folks out of $1.7 million in a gold-mine scheme. He also was an associate of organized crime figure Joseph "Joe Bananas" Bonanno and his sons.

Among the clips was a pretty spooky one involving press rights, or the lack thereof.

In October of 1983, then 3rd-District Judge Homer Wilkinson issued a gag order prohibiting the the news media from using the terms "Mafia" or "organized crime" or similar terms in their trial coverage.

Gag orders are fairly common in high-profile court cases, but usually they're aimed at those with direct involvement -- attorneys, witnesses, jurors and the like.

Banning the press from printing something -- and the electronic media from airing it -- is generally considered unconstitutional "prior restraint," like that rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court in the Pentagon Papers case.

But the Utah Supreme Court upheld Wilkinson's gag order.

The 4-1 ruling written by then Chief Justice Gordon Hall added a new test in determining when fair-trial interests outweighed free press interests: basically whether immediate public access to the information was important.

"In this case we perceive no significant public interest in immediate access to the sole subject of the restraining order: that Gatto, on trial for theft by deception, had some direct or indirect connection or association with organized crime," the ruling said.

But the Supremes did limit the ability to suppress information -- suggesting that they might have ruled differently in the case "of a public official, (or when there is) evidence of official misconduct" or when the organized crime connections were relevant in the trial.

"In those types of cases legitimate public interest is at its highest peak and the right to know could well outweigh competing interest and justify the expense and risk of sequestering the jury."

-- dh