BOOK AT CENTER OF METH CASE ISN'T ABOUT DRUGS

Receipt Cops Sought Was For Volume On Japanese Calligraphy

It turns out that a book at the heart of a controversial drug case that went
all the way to the Colorado Supreme Court isn't about drugs at all.

It was a calligraphy book about how to draw Japanese characters.

For nearly two years, investigators in the North Metro Drug Task Force tried
to obtain a receipt they thought was linked to two books they found in a
mobile home that had been used as a methamphetamine lab.

But their attempt to obtain a receipt from the Tattered Cover bookstore led
to a ground-breaking legal case in which the state's highest court upheld
the store's right to protect its customer's privacy.

But on Tuesday, an attorney for the defendant revealed the title of the book
linked to the disputed receipt for the first time in public.

It was Guide to Remembering Japanese Characters.

The title was disclosed during a forum at the Denver Press Club, where a
documentary about the case titled Reading Your Rights had been screened.

In the discussion that followed the film, Dan Bowen, a public defender
representing the suspect in the case, disclosed the book's subject matter.

Dan Recht, the lawyer for the Tattered Cover, confirmed the sale but said
the issue was never about whether the police had the right book.

"The Tattered Cover believes that all information about customer purchases
is private," Recht said after the forum. "The bookstore is not in the
business of determining what is helpful to law enforcement and what is not."

The case began in March 2000 when drug investigators found a Tattered Cover
mailing envelope in the trash outside a methamphetamine lab.

Inside the lab, they found two manuals on how to make methamphetamine. They
wanted to get the bookstore receipt to tie one of the defendants to the two
books.

As the case made its way through the courts, Recht said he found himself
listening to the other side's arguments and thinking, "You don't need this
book."

"But we can't tell you that you don't need this book - because it's
private," he said.

Even without the bookstore receipt, investigators were able to put together
enough of a case to file drug charges against the book's owner.

Bowden would not reveal the suspect's name. But he confirmed that his client
told prosecutors the title of the book as part of a plea bargain reached
last month.

But under that arrangement, his client will have plenty of time to work on
his calligraphy. He was sentenced to six years in state prison.