Prosecutors and locals had good cause to try to bring to justice those at James Madison University responsible for, as described by the editors of the Washington Post,

the violence that turned an annual spring bacchanalia this month into a blood-stained melee resulting in dozens of arrests and several hospitalizations. Drunken, loutish students and visitors [on the campus] set dumpsters afire, vandalized property and showered cops, and each other, with beer bottles and rocks.

But the local prosecutor acted wrongly when, hot in pursuit of unpublished photos of the riot, she showed up brandishing a search warrant at the JMU student newspaper, the Breeze.

The Breeze’s editor, a junior, remarked that she “‘didn’t think it was right,’” prompting the Post to remark that the student showed a better grasp of the law than the prosecutor. “Much as the hooligans at JMU deserve to face justice,” it concluded, “there are ways to pursue it that do not involve trampling the First Amendment and intimidating college journalists.”