Lancaster County Coroner G. Gary Kirchner was handcuffed and hauled into court Monday on charges he broke the law by giving Intelligencer Journal reporters a restricted password to a county Web site where the coroner, fire officials and emergency responders maintain a log.

State Attorney General Tom Corbett, whose office led an 18-month grand jury investigation, accused Kirchner of breaching the security of the 911 communications center Web site and violating the public trust "to help a small group of reporters gain an edge over competing media outlets."

Kirchner, 73, a retired surgeon who was elected coroner in November 2003, said after Monday's arraignment in Columbia on two felony charges, he "will successfully defend the charges, and I will continue to be a full-time coroner." He was released on $5,000 bail.

Kirchner was charged with unlawful use of a computer and conspiracy.

Asked if he allowed reporters to improperly access the Lancaster County-Wide Communications Web site, Kirchner said, "I don't think so."

The grand jury did not bring charges against reporters, but in its 19-page report said five journalists "abused the Web site by entering it to gain tactical advantage in reporting over the competing newspaper."

It said a breach of the Web site could "frustrate, impede or possibly obstruct legitimate law enforcement investigations."

The lack of charges against five reporters who accessed the coroner's section of the county Web site "can only be taken as a clear indication that no criminal activity was engaged in by the reporters," said George Werner, attorney for Lancaster Newspapers Inc., publisher of the Intelligencer Journal, Lancaster New Era and Sunday News.

Werner said the reporters did not believe they were doing anything wrong because Kirchner had given them the means to get into his section of the county Web site.

"It became clear during the investigation that the reporters had been authorized, indeed, invited by the coroner to use his password and user name," Werner said.

Werner described the data reporters viewed on the Web site as a dispatch log for the coroner and his deputies. He said the log helped reporters get a jump on stories when they couldn't reach a coroner by phone.

"It's not a situation where we were getting access to critical, confidential law enforcement information that might somehow impact an investigation," Werner said.

He said neither the grand jury nor the attorney general cited an instance when the information reporters gained from the Web site jeopardized an investigation.

Reporters did not have access to the police section of the Web site that contains specific details of police investigations and alleged crimes, Werner said.

The Web site had two successive log-in pages with warning notices saying the database was only for government business by authorized personnel and that violators may be prosecuted.

The attorney general compelled five reporters to testify before the grand jury by granting them immunity, which they had not sought.

According to the grand jury report, Carrie Cassidy, who reported for the Intelligencer Journal from 2000 to 2004, testified she didn't know the confidential section of the Web site existed until Kirchner in early 2004 offered her his password.

She said he told her to check the Web site rather than call him for information.

Four other reporters who covered the police beat on a full-time or occasional basis also learned about the password from Kirchner or other reporters. They were Paula Holzman, Brett Lovelace, Madelyn Pennino and P.J. Reilly.

Lovelace testified he received the password in the spring of 2004 from either Cassidy or Reilly, informed Kirchner he was using it and was invited by Kirchner to continue using it.

Lovelace said Kirchner mentioned giving the password to other reporters. Lovelace said he gave the password to Holzman and Pennino and said news editor Jon Ferguson knew he and other reporters were getting into the Web site.

Authorities were alerted to a reporter having access to the Web site when a story in the Aug. 22, 2005, edition of the Intelligencer Journal about a woman's body found in a city apartment cited the Lancaster County-Wide Communications Web site as a source of information.

A 911 information systems specialist conducted an investigation that found the Web site had been accessed six times from Lancaster Newspapers computers between 3:20 and 4:20 p.m. Aug. 21, 2005, but the user name was Gary Kirchner.

Further investigation found newspaper computers using Kirchner's user name and password had accessed the Web site 57 times between Aug. 7 and Aug. 21, 2005.

Kirchner's password access was terminated Aug. 22, 2005. Thirty-three unsuccessful attempts from Lancaster Newspapers' computers to access the Web site occurred in the two weeks that followed.

State investigators said they obtained an exchange of e-mail between Lovelace, Reilly and Kirchner from September 2005 in which the reporters informed Kirchner of the password failure and asked him to provide them the new user ID and password.

"I will make sure it is kept confidential," Reilly wrote.

Lovelace wrote to Kirchner: "I used to rely on the coroner Web-cad and it saved me from always calling you for stuff. ... It would be a big favor to me if you could get me back online."

Kirchner replied he had been issued a new password but was not gaining access to the Web site himself.

Investigators seized computers from Kirchner's East Lampeter Township home in January 2006. The following month they served Lancaster Newspapers Inc. with a subpoena commanding the company to turn over four hard drives.

The newspaper agreed to let investigators examine the computers at the newspaper office, but only for information relevant to the investigation. The attorney general's office, however, ordered the newspaper to surrender the computers.

The newspaper contested the order and appealed to the state Supreme Court, arguing that the reporters' hard drives contain confidential source information that is protected from disclosure to the government by the First Amendment, Pennsylvania's Shield Law and the federal First Amendment Privacy Protection Act.

The newspaper lost the initial appeal last March on a procedural issue. When investigators sought two more hard drives, the newspaper again appealed to the state Supreme Court, which ruled in October that the government's attempt to seize newsroom computers was "unduly intrusive" and could have a "chilling effect" on sources providing confidential information.

County District Attorney Donald Totaro last year prosecuted several emergency responders and civilians for unauthorized access to the 911 system or sharing access to unauthorized persons.

Totaro, however, asked the attorney general to investigate Kirchner because of a potential conflict of interest in investigating a county official with whom he regularly worked.

Clay Calvert, professor of communications and law at Penn State and co-director of the Pennsylvania Center for the First Amendment, said the reporters' conduct may be legal but is still ethically questionable.

"The clear-cut case is if they aided and abetted in getting the password. That would be completely wrong," Calvert said.

"They, however, were merely the fortunate recipients of the password, which makes the ethical situation slightly more complex."

He said newspapers whose reporters obtain information through unconventional means need to ask themselves this question: "Is this information so important that it justifies the possibility that we're going to harm readers' trust in us when they find out how we got it? Is that a trade-off we want?"

Newspaper editor Ray Shaw said he didn't perceive an ethical dilemma because the coroner had explicitly offered his section of the Web site to the reporters for their convenience.

"We presumed that (Kirchner) felt it was a valuable public outreach tool for his office," Shaw said.

Shaw likened the reporters' regular checks of the Web site to the daily checks reporters make at police stations to view the police blotter.

As to future use of Web site passwords by reporters, Shaw said, an attorney will be consulted and staff will be informed of the legal advice.

"Certainly, our consciousness has been raised," he said.

Pennsylvania Office of the Attorney General — Lancaster County Coroner Investigation

Jeff Hawkes' e-mail address is jhawkes@lnpnews.com.