Publisher's Notebook

On Oct. 31, Ian Graham got dressed for work. Although he is a photographer and more likely to wear jeans on the job, he put on a coat and tie.

Later that evening he was wearing handcuffs.

Graham works for RVA Magazine, an alternative entertainment and arts publication in Richmond. That night, he had a free-lance gig to photograph a Halloween party at a trendy Richmond nightclub.

Around 1 a.m., when the typical Halloween bash is at its scariest, he got a phone call from Preston Duncan, the publisher of RVA Magazine. The police were moving on the Occupy Richmond site. Let’s get over there and cover it, Duncan said.

The two men went to Kanawha Plaza in downtown Richmond, a public square that was full of hand-lettered protest signs and a scruffy crowd of people who had been camping there for weeks. Like so many protesters in different cities who sought to follow the example of the “Occupy Wall Street” organizers, they railed, somewhat indiscriminately, against “greed” or corporate anything.

In an account published at rvamag.com, Duncan wrote that while he and Graham were standing on the public sidewalk on the perimeter of the plaza, they were threatened with arrest by the police. They moved to the area designated for journalists. But the view from that corner was obscured.

Graham walked to the middle of a crosswalk to get a better angle. He was arrested for trespassing and handcuffed. There were other people on both sides of the crosswalk, Graham wrote in the same account.

“But none of them had cameras,” he added.

Graham was charged under Virginia Code § 18.2-119, a section called “Trespass after having been forbidden to do so.” It is a Class 1 misdemeanor punishable by up to 12 months in jail and a $2,500 fine.

Graham told me that he was supposed to have a hearing on Nov. 18; he and his lawyer, Patrick Anderson, expected the charges to be dropped. But the Richmond commonwealth’s attorney’s office for some reason is playing hardball, so Anderson got a continuance.

Anderson, who has been retained by the American Civil Liberties Union to represent Graham, said he couldn’t comment except to confirm that the matter is set for trial on Jan. 24. The Richmond commonwealth’s attorney’s office wasn’t talking either; they didn’t return my call by press time.

Graham’s case is one of eight instances across the country in which journalists have been arrested while seeking to cover police activity relating to Occupy protests. That’s a distinction the City of Richmond, and the Commonwealth of Virginia, should not be proud of.

Journalist groups in the commonwealth have lodged protests with police and prosecutors over Graham’s arrest; there is even a Facebook group called “Free Ian Graham.”

The Virginia Code provides a strong statement of public policy about how journalists should be treated when covering news events. It’s about police lines, but you will get the idea. Code § 15.2-1714 allows “personnel from information services such as press, radio and television” to cross a police line “when gathering news,” so long as they don’t obstruct the police in their work. In other words, as a question of policy, journalists with cameras get to go where others can’t, when they are covering news events.

According to Mickey H. Osterreicher, general counsel for the National Press Photographers Association, very few other states provide such statutory protection to the news media. Virginia’s statute is strong and could serve as a model for other states, he said.

What exactly is Graham accused of? Here is the pertinent language of Code § 18.2-119: “If any person without authority of law goes upon or remains upon the lands, buildings or premises of another … after having been forbidden to do so … by the owner, lessee, custodian, or the agent of any such person, or other person lawfully in charge thereof … he shall be guilty of a Class 1 misdemeanor.”

This statute is used by landlords to get rid of deadbeat tenants, by merchants to prevent suspected shoplifters from coming into a store and by public housing projects to keep away undesirables.

Ian Graham, armed with his camera and doing his job as a photojournalist, doesn’t fit that list.

There are so many ifs to a prosecution under this statute: If Graham was there “without authority of law.” If the officers issued a proper warning, “forbidding” Graham from any locale. If the cops were the custodians or “lawfully in charge” of the street. If this statute even applies.

The Supreme Court of Virginia has interpreted Code § 18.2-119 and predecessor statutes in a number of cases. In 1929, the court held that the trespass law does not apply to “thoroughfares,” a position it has reiterated repeatedly. A 1990 Virginia Court of Appeals opinion defined thoroughfares: “those ways or passages designated for public access.” Sounds like a crosswalk to me.

Why hasn’t this case been dropped? Why has Graham been forced to lawyer up and sweat out a possible jail term?

There’s hardball, and then there is the pursuit of unwarranted criminal charges that aren’t supported by the facts or the law. Call that what it is: governmental intimidation and an abuse of an individual’s basic rights.

Free Ian Graham?

Hell, yes. Free us all.

When your husband and your son are both named Paul E. Fletcher, and the big, burly man standing at your doorstep is trying to serve suit papers on Paul E. Fletcher, and you are 100 percent certain the man is looking for a different Paul E. Fletcher, you know it’s going to take a good long time for your heart to stop thumping.

Just ask my mother.

If you ever Google yourself, you can find out who shares your name.

Paul Fletcher is a member of the House of Representatives in Australia.

Paul Fletcher is a psychiatry professor at the University of  Cambridge in England.

Paul Fletcher pitched in the major leagues for three seasons, for the Phillies and the A’s.

If you have a common surname such as Smith, Jones, Williams or Johnson, and you have a common given name, you’re probably used to this happening.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Fletcher is the 352nd most common name in America. And Paul is one of those biblical names that show up with some regularity. So it’s no surprise there are men who share my name.

But when you have a name doppelganger out there, you find it can have a dark edge.

This isn’t a case of identity theft. It’s more identity confusion or mistaken identity. Either way, it can be a source of heartburn.

I grew up in South Florida. When I was about 20, I learned there was another Paul E. Fletcher on the loose in the area. Same name, same middle initial, no relation. I learned about him when the police called my mother, looking for him. No, no, she assured the officer, my son is away at college in Virginia.

I’m glad she realized they weren’t trying to find me.

That was merely the first time that Other Paul and I were confused. I learned in 1984 that he was a year older than I am: The organizers of Other Paul’s 10-year reunion at Stranahan High in Fort Lauderdale were kind enough to invite me to the festivities.

After I got out of law school, I stayed in Virginia. Other Paul stayed in South Florida, and he stayed in trouble – and before too long, he became a bother to my dad, also named Paul E. Fletcher.

My mother said that over a 20-year time frame they would get phone calls seeking Other Paul. Usually the caller was angry and refused to believe that Other Paul wasn’t there. One started in by assuming my mom was Other Paul’s wife, calling her “Diane.” We were learning more about Other Paul’s life than we wanted to know.

Other Paul started two plumbing companies about 1990 and the Broward County authorities started getting complaints. One company was the target of an investigation of plumbers who went in to fix a small job, then tunneled under the house, looking for a nonexistent problem and racking up a big bill. An 80-year-old woman complained about a $52,000 tab that started with a leaky toilet. A subcontractor who worked for Other Paul was charged with fraud.

The newspaper interviewed Other Paul and he brushed off the complaints as “insinuations,” adding that he had “thousands” of satisfied customers in South Florida.

Maybe so, but the Broward County online court records are littered with lawsuits brought against Other Paul and his businesses, with a common theme that he had somehow taken advantage of someone else.

All these claims would explain the phone calls to my parents’ house. And that day when my mother opened her front door and there was the process server, seeking to hang paper on Other Paul. After a long explanation that he had the wrong house and the wrong guy, the man left, papers still in hand.

Other Paul later went into the concrete business, and there he got into real trouble. A story in the Fort Lauderdale paper said he was indicted for grand theft in 2004, after taking a big check for a job he never started. He failed to appear in court, and he was declared a fugitive. A reporter found him in a hospital bed. He had cancer.

The next mention of Other Paul in the paper was an obituary. He died in March 2005 at the age of 48.

I never met Other Paul; I don’t know what demons may have driven him to try to take advantage of other people the way he did. His misadventures never caused any real harm to me or my dad, but the knowledge that he had troubles, and that we sometimes were mistaken for him, was, to use my mom’s word, disconcerting. Who knew when one of his “thousands” of customers would turn vengeful and come to my parents’ house?

You’re never happy to read about a death. But please forgive me if I admit that some tiny part of me was relieved when I knew he would no longer besmirch our shared name.

On May 18, 1988, I interviewed Dr. Rick Kern, director of the Virginia Criminal Sentencing Commission, for an article about a draft of new guidelines the commission was proposing.

Why the date? It was the day I started working here. Rick was the first interview I had for my first story published in Virginia Lawyers Weekly.

Rick Kern died last Sunday, Dec. 13, after a long battle with cancer. He was 58. The Richmond Times-Dispatch has an obituary in this morning’s edition.

Gov. Bob McDonnell issued a statement praising him: “Virginia has lost a brilliant scholar, devoted public servant and leading criminologist today. Dr. Kern was nationally and internationally known for his work in offender recidivism and risk assessment. He left a lasting legacy on Virginia’s criminal justice system, having lead in the development of the truth-in sentencing laws when Virginia abolished parole in 1994.

The governor added his condolences to the family. “While their personal loss is painful and immediate, they can rest assured that Rick Kern’s contributions to public safety in Virginia will have a lasting impact on generations to come.”

Indeed. RIP.

It’s finals week down at the College of Knowledge in Williamsburg.

And William & Mary’s main library, Earl Gregg Swem Library, has announced that it will remain open for 125 straight hours this week.

So what are the stressed-out students doing? A number of them have, well, moved into Swem. “Campus Overload,” a blog from the Washington Post, quotes a student-run publication that said some students have set up make-shift tents and have cots in the library. There was a small stampede last Sunday afternoon when the library opened for the duration; students were loaded down with bedding, clothes, and, oh yes, books and study materials.

Ever clever, some of the new Swem residents have set up a Twitter feed called #OccupySwem, detailing life in the stacks.