Peter scheer

Peter Scheer is executive director of the California First Amendment Coalition, a public interest organization active in First Amendment and FOI issues both regionally, in California, and nationally.

Scheer, a lawyer and journalist, received his JD degree from Harvard Law School (1978), where he was an editor of the Harvard Law Review, and has argued cases in the U.S. Supreme Court and most of the federal courts of appeal. He was editor and publisher of The Recorder legal newspaper in San Francisco, publisher of Legal Times in Washington, DC and CEO of law.com. As a lawyer, he was an appellate litigator in the US Justice Department (Criminal Division), an associate with Hughes, Hubbard & Reed (Washington, DC office), and a partner in the (now defunct) Washington, DC law firm of Onek, Klein & Farr.

Scheer's articles on law, politics and public policy appear frequently in Slate, the Sacramento Bee, San Francisco Chronicle, San Jose Mercury News, San Diego Union News & Tribune and the Los Angeles Daily Journal, among other publications.

ID'ing Scheer is important because of his (my) prominence in California lawsuits and news stories about First Amendment liberties.

	1. 30-06-2010 18:39
	To Peter Scheer, lawyer, journalist & exec. director of the First Amendment Coalition. The events you describe in "Was Search Unwarranted" (S.F. Chronicle 5/17/10) are far from new. My son was a photographer with press credentials when San Mateo served a like broad warrant and seized over 60 hard drives, 5 computers, ipods and other storage devices on premise that they "could" contain digital evidence - despite their sole "witness" being a delusional 10 year old child who (a) identified a single computer in a single room that he alleged had many months prior contained contraband images; and (b) 6 months after the seizures admitted to making the whole thing up. On both occasions his "information" given as confidences to a therapist who cross reported to SMPD. Meanwhile 3 years on, nothing has been returned of the 4.2 terrabytes and 18 years worth of files seized - San Mateo court having ruled the search constitutional and given SMPD no incentive to change its practice in the more recent example you cite. This just one of many unethical, perjurous and felony acts SMPD officers comitted in pursuit of his conviction that public defender in San Mateo deems fruitless to object to or try to stem at SMPD! Regards Margaret Thomas Guest