Denver’s Tattered Cover bookstore will appeal a court order to tell police who purchased two books on drug-making. Owner Joyce Meskis said November 2 that revealing the buyer would jeopardize others who buy controversial works.
District Judge J. Stephens Phillips ordered the store on October 20 to give police a copy of an invoice believed to have been in a Tattered Cover envelope found outside a mobile home. Police had found a methamphetamine lab and the drug-making books inside the home. ALA and the Freedom to Read Foundation filed an amicus curiae brief in the case, and Judith Krug, director of ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom, was an expert witness at an October 17 hearing.
Meskis and Denver authorities have agreed to ask the state appeals court to let the case go straight to the Colorado Supreme Court to expedite the drug investigation, the Associated Press reported November 2.
Posted November 6, 2000.