Editor of weekly paper resists bid for testimony

3/2/2006
Mike Hudson, editor of the Niagara Falls Reporter weekly newspaper, is resisting a defense attorney's attempt to require him to testify in the Laborers Local 91 racketeering trial.

Hudson has been subpoenaed by the defense to provide notes and other information from interviews with a businessman who alleged he was harassed and threatened by a union official.

"I will not testify in this case. Period," Hudson told The Buffalo News on Wednesday.

Four former Local 91 officials are scheduled to go to trial on federal labor racketeering charges in late June. The defendants include Joel Cicero, a former training director who is accused of interfering with a business run by a Colorado developer, Joseph Aragon.

Cicero's attorney, Joseph M. LaTona, wants Hudson to provide information about interviews he conducted with Aragon for a series of articles that began in 2002.

Hudson, 50, who is represented by Buffalo attorney David G. Jay, has been a journalist for 30 years, working in Niagara Falls since 1998. He has vowed to go to jail before testifying in the Local 91 case.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
— The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution

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-- Edited by kspeer at 11:17, 2006-03-02