For obvious reasons, police need secrecy when requesting search warrants. Eventually, however, these warrants need to be part of the public record for transparency and scrutiny.

WHAS11 had been checking with the Circuit Court Clerk's office every day for any court records related to the search and murder of Cesar "Ivan" Aguilar-Cano, whose body was discovered in a trash bag on Saturday, July 7, 2007. On Wednesday, July 11, that office released to us not only a search warrant, but the "affidavit for search warrant," which is the brief police submit to a judge so the judge will approve a warrant.

This is rarely, if ever, a public document. And this one laid out the evidence which has led police to search a neighboring sex offender's apartment.

I was covering the nuts and bolts of the investigation for the 5pm and 6pm newscasts and was talking on the phone with LMPD Public Information Officer Phil Russell about 10:30am when I was handed a note by a colleague that we had that search warrant. Needless to say, Russell was surprised when I passed that information along. I told him I needed to read it first, but would be seeking police comment later.

Later, Russell called me back with the bombshell that set the course for the rest of the day: the search warrant is a sealed court document and Metro Police would be seeking a court order to prevent us from reporting it.

Time to get the bosses involved. I advised management of the impending phone call and began to consider whether our reporting could in any way jeopardize the investigation.

That was the crux of our editorial decision: could authorities explain HOW our reporting would hinder the investigation. It's not enough that they PREFER we not release something. Heck, there is someone in every news story that would prefer we not run it.

We exercised caution and held off on reporting any details of the document at the start of the noon news while a lawyer with the Commonwealth's Attorney pleaded with us not to air anything, The problem is, that lawyer could not give us any specific examples of how those details would hurt the investigation. So, WHAS11 broadcast details within the document at 12:30.

In the mean time, I was preparing my stories for 5pm, 5:30pm and 6pm, and was calling police about every half-hour to include their characterizations of the warrant and the investigation.

Keep in mind, WHAS11 had never heard HOW the release of this document would hurt the investigation. But, we were obviously always open to hearing what police had to say.

At about 2:30pm, the police spokesman told me that the relevant police staff were meeting to discuss their position and that they would let me know the police request for discretion by 3:30pm. I explained that I needed to know ASAP because our stories go through their own editorial and editing process that is not instantaneous.

Finally, I was asked to meet with police at 4:10pm at LMPD headquarters. They were staggering meetings with members of the media which had the documents. But, when we arrived, it ended up that all local TV stations met with police at the same time. That's when we conducted the interview with Major Dave Wood, about 4:30pm.

I pressed him to make his case for which parts of the document would hurt the investigation. And, with about twenty minutes to air, police finally spelled that out. I had asked WHAS11 News Director Aaron Ramey to accompany me to that meeting, so on the short drive back to the station, we worked to redact the information that police had convinced us would jeopardize their investigation if released.

I cannot speak for any other media (but believe me I have strong opinions about everyone's editorial decisions that day), yet I am proud of the actions we did and did not take that day to be both journalistically sound and responsible to the community.

Postlude (7/12): Because I shared the process of how the WHAS11 decision was made, I thought it appropriate in this instance to also share how police responded to our story. After each of my reports on the search warrant affidavit, Det. Russell called the station to say "thank you" to WHAS11 for "taking the high road."

I well imagine that homicide detectives are wondering the same thing.