The New Castle News announced today it will file a court protest against the unannounced seizure by authorities of a newsroom computer that police say was used to illegally record phone conversations with two local public officials about a proposed police training facility.

The News’ petition will ask that the city police department return the computer immediately, saying it is important to the daily production of the paper and could be subject to indiscriminate search of sensitive news files.

Sgt. Kevin Seelbaugh confiscated the computer the afternoon of July 25 after District Justice Melissa A. Amodie issued a search warrant to determine if News reporter Pat Litowitz had recorded conversations with Northwest Lawrence Regional Police Chief Jim Morris and Mahoning Township Supervisor Francis Exposito without informing them beforehand.

Morris asked Seelbaugh to seek the search warrant on the basis that a state privacy law requires both parties consent to a recorded phone conversation in Pennsylvania. Violation of the law is a third-degree felony punishable by up to seven years in prison.

Morris learned from his wife, Debbie Wachter Morris, who also is a reporter at The News, that Litowitz recorded a conversation with the chief and also with Exposito.

The phone conversations at issue concerned a story Litowitz was pursuing about a proposed police training facility in Mahoning Township. There was no contention by Chief Morris or Exposito that Litowitz had represented himself as anything other than a reporter for The News.

On July 17, Litowitz initiated a call to Morris, who was unavailable, telling him the subject of his inquiry. Morris later returned the call to Litowitz’s cell phone. Litowitz also talked with Exposito about the story.

Eventually, the story was written by News reporter Nancy Lowry, who also had gathered information about the police training facility. Litowitz played the recorded calls with Chief Morris and Exposito for Lowry so she could use the information in her story.

Lowry said she mentioned the recorded conversations to Wachter Morris, who then told her husband. That’s when Chief Morris contacted New Castle police and the computer was seized, along with several recording devices belonging to Litowitz, during an unannounced visit to the newsroom by Seelbaugh.

News publisher Max Thomson said he did not protest the search and seizure at the time because he considered the matter “largely an internal office misunderstanding that could be worked out. Those efforts have failed and the district attorney, for whatever reason, has decided to pursue the case.”

Chief Morris declined to say why he pursued the case against Litowitz and whether he considered their conversation to be off the record.

His wife said that he previously had asked her to inform him if she ever learned that he had been recorded without his knowledge. She said she and her husband had discussed the legality of taping phone conversations, and that she found a law regarding the practice about a year ago.

“When I became aware that it was not a legal thing to do, I brought it to my supervisor’s (News managing editor Tim Kolodziej) attention that someone in the newsroom was doing it,” Wachter Morris said.

“I gave him (Kolodziej) a copy of the law I got from the Internet and told him if someone in the newsroom was violating it, I felt it should stop, and that if anyone found out about it, we could be in trouble,” she said.

“When I brought the matter to Tim’s attention after he had read the law, he advised the person in front of me (Litowitz) not to do it any more unless he asked permission first.”