Subpoenas quashed in Atwater case

WINSTON-SALEM -- Media companies across North Carolina successfully fought attempts by federal defense attorneys to force them to hand over copies of anything that has been published about the Eve Carson homicide case.

U.S. District Judge James A. Beaty Jr. agreed on Wednesday to quash subpoenas seeking such information, saying that granting such a request would be unduly burdensome and expensive for media organizations.

Demario Atwater, 23, is one of two suspects accused of murdering Carson, an admired UNC-Chapel Hill student body president found shot to death in March 2008. Atwater faces a capital murder charge in state court and federal kidnapping and carjacking charges that could bring the death penalty.

Trying to bolster their request to move the federal trial to Virginia, federal public defenders asked 60 media organizations for copies of all newspaper articles, letters and editorials about the case and copies of all radio and television broadcasts. Media companies argued that such a request would turn them into research firms for the public defenders.