Alleged cop killer asks to have statements suppressed: Should media play fair?

A bit of news wonkery here: Alleged cop killer Richard Poplawski’s public defender argued in a hearing yesterday to suppress statements Poplawski made following his horrifying gun battle with City of Pittsburgh police last April. The public defender sought to persuade the court that Poplawski was hopped up on painkillers and therefore not stable enough to sign away his right to remain silent.

Poplawski did not, in fact, remain silent while being examined and treated at a local hospital after allegedly killing four police officers. He said some pretty terrible and inculpatory shit, actually.

That’s where the wonkery comes in.

Pittsburgh has two competing daily newspapers, the Tribune-Review and the Post-Gazette. Each ran a story about yesterday’s hearing. Their respective leads follow.

Post Gazette:

An attorney representing the Stanton Heights man who is accused of killing three Pittsburgh police officers is trying to get a statement he made from his hospital bed the morning after the shootings thrown out of court.

Public defender Lisa G. Middleman called a number of witnesses at a suppression hearing Friday for Richard Poplawski, trying to persuade the judge that her client was under the influence of painkillers and was not emotionally stable enough when he waived his right to legal counsel and spoke to police.

The defense plans to call one additional witness at a hearing in March before Allegheny County Judge Jeffrey A. Manning issues his decision.

Tribune-Review:

Richard Poplawski shouted racial slurs at a black detective and insulted other officers in the hospital following a shootout at his Stanton Heights home, witnesses said Friday in another hearing for the man accused of killing three policemen.

“(Expletive) like you are the reason people like me shoot people like you,” Poplawski said to officers guarding him at UPMC Presbyterian in Oakland, according to a prosecutor and testimony from nurse Diana Doherty.

Poplawski’s attorneys want to keep jurors from hearing statements he made to police when the as-yet unscheduled trial starts on charges he fatally shot Pittsburgh police Officers Eric G. Kelly, Stephen J. Mayhle and Paul J. Sciullo II. The officers died responding to a domestic dispute April 4. Common Pleas Judge Jeffrey A. Manning will likely rule on the matter after the hearing concludes March 22.

Guess which one made Yahoo!’s landing page this morning.

While it was nice of the Trib to replace the word “cocksuckers” with “(Expletive)” in their report, their intro is much more sensational. But that’s the media issue: What’s fair? We know people have short attention spans. Since the hearing was about whether or not arguably inadmissible statements should be allowed at trial, should a newspaper lead with that, or with the most inflammatory statement itself? And if your answer is the latter, will that totally fuck up any chance Poplawski has at a fair trial?

Poplawski’s jury will be trucked in from a far away county, so apparently the court has determined too many local folks know too much about the case anyway. And if that’s the scenario, well, then — why not go hog wild?