I find Saturday's Star Tribune story by Paul McEnroe and Rochelle Olson on the expunged 1995 arrest of Republican Fifth District congressional candidate Alan Fine to be reprehensible. We posted the rationale offered by Star Tribune "reader's representative" Kate Parry for the Star Tribune's publication of the story here. Parry conteded that the story had "news value" because "Fine was arrested by the police, charged with domestic assault and spent a few hours in jail" and that "the allegations raised in the court documents were corroborated by the ex-wife in interviews with Star Tribune reporters." Parry did not mention or comment on the expungement of the arrest.

At the Star Tribune's online site, editor Anders Gyllenhaal has also offered his rationale for the publication of the story. Anyone who suspects that the Star Tribune offices are something of an echo chamber won't be disabused of the notion by Gyllenhaal's comments:

Several elements contributed to the decision to run the story: The officers who answered the domestic call decided to pursue the arrest and sent Fine to jail; the candidate’s former wife told reporters last week that the assault occurred even though she ended up withdrawing the charge; Fine’s former father-in-law, a local judge, backed up his daughter and said he’d been told of other instances of domestic abuse.

Gyllenhaal concludes by asserting that Fine's 1995 arrest and domestic dispute is part of its "full portrait" of Fine. Like Parry, Gyllenhaal omits any mention of the fact that Fine's arrest was expunged and, like McEnroe and Olson, Gyllenhaal fails to reveal whether the Star Tribune's source for the document obtained or released it legally to the Star Tribune.

It is difficult to overstate the vacuity of Parry's and Gyllenhaal's comments. Alan Fine was arrested in 1995 based on his wife's charge. His wife repeated the charge in 2006. Also in 2006, the ex-wife's father "backed up his daughter" -- i.e., repeats what his daughter allegedly told him in 1995. Despite all the huffing and puffing, the Star Tribune's story rests on the word of Alan Fine's wife.

The fact of the arrest -- the fact that Alan Fine's wife had charged him with domestic assault in 1995 -- was known by the Star Tribune this past May when the Star Tribune found an online reference to the arrest. Having now obtained the expunged arrest record, the Star Tribune knows that Alan Fine was indeed arrested for domestic assault in 1995. Does anything in the records obtained by the Star Tribune substantiate the charge that Fine assaulted his wife? Apparently not. McEnroe and Olson describe the arrest report as follows:

The report states that officers arrested Fine in his home at 3907 Zenith Av. S. after his then-wife told them that Fine had assaulted her. Police noted in the report that Fine had scratches on his face and chest.

That's it. To outward appearances, Alan Fine was perhaps the victim of an assault by his wife; the Star Tribune does not report any fact to substantiate the wife's assault charge other than the fact of Fine's arrest. Contrary to Kate Parry's statement and the implication of Anders Gyllenhaal's comments, the wife's reiteration of her withdrawn 1995 charge in 2006 does not "corroborate" it.

McEnroe and Olson's story suggests that the alleged assault was litigated in the 1996 divorce proceedings:

Fine stated in an affidavit connected with the divorce proceedings that his then-wife "admitted to me, in the presence of another person, that she had made a mistake in having me arrested and that her allegations were untrue." Fine was asked repeatedly by reporters to identify who that other person was. He said he could not remember.

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According to Rebecca Wexler's divorce affidavit, the alleged assaults started in late 1993 when she was two months pregnant. "In the middle of an argument, [Fine] suddenly slapped me across the face with sufficient force to knock me to the ground," she stated in her affidavit.

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She said in the affidavit that he "took a few steps away, then turned around and said, 'Wait, let me get the other side,' and slapped me on the side of my face." When he returned to the house that evening, she said she ordered him to leave. When he slapped her again, she said, she called police and Fine was arrested.

The assault evidence introduced in the divorce proceedings would be relevant only to the custody of Alan Fine's son. McEnroe and Olson, Parry and Gyllenhaal all omit to mention that the divorce court (as I understand matters) awarded Fine custody of his son. The Star Tribune fails to report on the disposition of custody in the divorce proceedings.

The assault charge was never adjudicated in 1995 and the Star Tribune has not undertaken the effort necessary to pass judgment on it in 2006. The arrest was based on the allegation of Fine's wife, which she withdrew at the time and reiterated in 2006. Alan Fine disputed the charge then and now. Having obtained the police report, the Star Tribune reports on physical evidence suggesting that Alan Fine was assaulted in 1995. The only adjudication related to the assault charge apparently favored Alan Fine. The arrest was expunged by court order and the arrest record sealed in 2004.

Based on the available evidence, I think the Star Tribune has wronged Alan Fine by publishing McEnroe and Olson's story, and that Kate Parry and Anders Gyllenhaal have compounded the wrong in their vacuous and misleading defense of it.

CORRECTION: In 1996 Fine's wife was awarded full physical custody and Fine was awarded joint legal custody of their son. Based on a review of documents provided to me, I have ascertained that Fine's ex-wife was herself subsequently charged with domestic assaults involving her boyfriend in one incident and Alan Fine's son in another incident in July and November 2003.

Fine was granted temporary full physical custody of his son in 2003 as a result of the incident betweem his ex-wife and her boyfriend and a child protection order was issued prohibiting the ex-wife from "acts of domestic abuse against the child." The November 2003 incident resulted in a criminal charge against Fine's ex-wife for assault and for violation of the protection order; the November 2003 incident also resulted in a subsequent court order limiting his ex-wife to visitation only under supervision.

At the current time Fine has joint physical and legal custody and his son primarily resides with Fine under a court order entered in 2004. In short, I believe that the Star Tribune left so many relevant facts out of the story that it cannot withstand scrutiny.

ADDENDUM: The Star Tribune story ot this past Sunday does not cite a single fact other than the word of Fine's ex-wife to support the assault charge against Fine; the only physical evidence cited from the police report fails to support the assault charge against Fine. In an April 2004 court order involving the divorce of the ex-wife's twin sister, Fine's ex-wife was prohibited from seeing her niece without supervision "because of alleged incidents of domestic violence." For some reason the Star Tribune story leaves out all evidence suggesting that Fine's ex-wife is a woman with a documented history of violence and anger management isssues.