“Why is DOJ fighting to keep mug shots out of reporters’ hands?” Alison Frankel’s “On the Case” from Thomson Reuters News & Insight has this report today.

Ninth Circuit to consider imposing sanctions against U.S. Department of Justice attorney for “improper oral argument” based on a Los Angeles Times article published just days before oral argument: You can access at this link a rather interesting order that a unanimous three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit issued today.

The Los Angeles Times article in question, as now available online, was headlined “Sex offender accused of assaulting teen was in U.S. illegally, officials say.” The oral argument video can be viewed online at YouTube at this link, advanced to the precise moment where the Justice Department attorney begins to reference the article in question.

Circuit Judge Kim McLane Wardlaw, who presided over the Ninth Circuit’s recent oral argument in the case, was the author of an opinion from 2013 that the identical three-judge panel issued requiring bond hearings for immigration detainees after 180 days. This blog’s earlier coverage of that ruling can be accessed here.

During last month’s Ninth Circuit oral argument in the case, it appears that the Justice Department’s attorney was suggesting that the Ninth Circuit’s 2013 ruling in the case helped bring about the resulting sex offender assault, while Judge Wardlaw maintained that it was the presiding Immigration Judge, also a Justice Department employee, who is responsible for letting a sex offender obtain bail under circumstances in which no reasonable jurist would find bail appropriate. In any event, the oral argument video shows that Judge Wardlaw was at least as familiar with the LA Times article as the arguing Justice Department attorney.

Update: In earlier coverage of the oral argument, Courthouse News Service reported that “DOJ Blasted for Timing and Use of News Story.”