Star Chamber

An advocate for chronic pain patients has challenged grand jury subpoenas in a rare case that climbed through the judicial system to the U.S. Supreme Court almost entirely in secret.

Siobhan Reynolds, president of the Pain Relief Network, has asked the nation's highest court to quash subpoenas issued to her and her nonprofit group and make public the proceedings against her. The usually public court docket has been sealed in her case in a federal court in Kansas and at the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Even at the U.S. Supreme Court, there was scant public record showing her case existed until last week, when the court agreed to make available a redacted version of her appeal while it decides whether to take the case.

Ms. Reynolds' attorney said the case is unusual because most secret proceedings involve some kind of national security; this one does not.

Ms. Reynolds, 49, attracted the government's attention by supporting Dr. Stephen Schneider and his wife who were convicted earlier this year of a moneymaking conspiracy linked to 68 overdose deaths stemming from their operation of a Kansas clinic prosecutors described as a "pill mill."

Last year, Ms. Reynolds paid for a highway billboard sign proclaiming: "Dr. Schneider never killed anyone."

Weeks after it went up, Ms. Reynolds said she got a subpoena from a federal grand jury seeking, among other things, documents related to her ad. The Associated Press obtained a copy of the subpoena, which also asks for Ms. Reynolds' communications with numerous lawyers, patients, the Schneiders and their relatives along with financial and telephone records and an advocacy video she made.

Can you say "fishing expedition"?

Ms. Reynolds' refusal to turn over the materials cost her and her nonprofit group $39,400 in fines before the money ran out. Faced with jail, she gave prosecutors the documents weeks before the Schneiders' summer trial began.

"They beat me up in the dark and then they sealed their rulings from public scrutiny," Reynolds told the AP. "This is not the America I thought I was living in."

Yes, grand jury proceedings are secret. But that is designed to protect from defamation those who are investigated but found not to merit a criminal charge, as well as to protect witnesses who might otherwise be threatened or harmed by the criminals against whom they testify. Such secrecy was never intended to shield the malicious manipulations of government agents anxious to silence criticism of their doings.

It's virtually impossible to escape the conclusion that the government's actions here have been designed to shut up Siobhan Reynolds and her associates -- to harass them, threaten them, to impose expenses and inconvenience on them with the goal of getting them to butt out, shut their mouths, and stop casting unwelcome attention on the efforts of the Drug War prosecutors.

This question over whether the drug war causes many patients to endure unnecessary pain as doctors are reluctant to prescribe "too much" relief is a matter of legitimate public concern. Yet when Ms. Reynolds speaks out on this issue, she gets hauled before a secret Star Chamber and bankrupted with fines if she stands up for her free-speech rights?

The Supreme Court is expected to decide whether to review the case sometime in December. The court should hear this case. It should make every part of this case public. It should chastise those who have abused the powers of the state to chill free expression on this issue. It should order Ms. Reynolds' sign put back up. And send the bill, personally, to every judge who went along with this travesty.